The Perfect Black Paint Color AKA The Exterior Reveal of Getaway House

Getaway House is finally finished after around nine months of working on it from start to finish! But the color we chose for the exterior has been even longer in the making.

For starters, we both love the look of black houses. Are they trendy right now? Yes. But do they look so damn good? Also yes. PJ has wanted a monochromatic black color scheme on the exterior of one of our houses for years, and this little cottage tucked away in the trees seemed like the perfect time to finally just do it. Actually, we almost painted my mom’s little cottage that we renovated two years ago black, but with all the direct sunlight it gets, we ultimately decided against it and painted it a deep green instead.

The exterior of Getaway House was something we always knew was going to get painted, even though, at the time, we were unsure the extent to which we wanted to renovate the inside. Before it was this light grey that honestly wasn’t the absolute worst color in the world, it just wasn’t the look either of us wanted.

The color we ended up going with is the absolute best black paint color of all time, in our humble opinions. We’ve used in on every house we’ve done if we’re painting something black, and the color is Tricorn Black by Sherwin Williams. We did it in a flat finish and absolutely love how it turned out.

Besides paint, the other changes we made were cosmetic but we gave them a lot of thought. Like the shutters for example. They were too small for the big window in the front and didn’t fit the craftsman style of house that Getaway is. PJ had a clear vision of less is more, and he wanted a clean and simple exterior.

The wrought iron columns were another thing we went back and forth on. At first we were just going to wrap them in wood and paint them black, too. But as the renovation progressed, PJ actually started to appreciate them more and more, and once we had the house painted black, he ultimately decided to keep them. We’re almost sure they’re original to the house. The plan is to eventually plant some kind of vine to have it wrap around them and just almost cover them completely. The green would pop so much against the black!

For landscaping, PJ had small gray gravel spread all around the house, which looks so good with the all black exterior. The original stepping stones were kept and cleaned up, and minimal greenery was planted around the front. There was also an old shed out back that was literally sinking into the ground and falling apart that we had removed, as well as irrigation work to re-route all that water that the property gets when it rains. It used to run right into the house, which caused a lot of floor damage, but PJ had them fix all of that and now it’s completely dry.

Another before and after because I’m still not over it: