How to Choose the Color of your Flagstone: Before & After

The colour of your house must be considered when choosing stone or brick for your landscaping. Here’s how to choose the colour of your flagstone, from my house to yours.

After living here a while, it was finally time for me to buy the flagstone for my front walkway.

Since I’m such a novice around landscaping, I have consulted with MaryAnne over every detail. One of the ONLY questions I did not ask her was regarding the colour of my flagstone.

Which flagstone colour do I choose?

The colour of your house MUST be taken into consideration when choosing the stone or brick that you will install in your hardscape.

My house is currently a pinky taupe. It will eventually be changed of course but there are other more pressing renos in front of changing perfectly good siding just because the colour is wrong.

Of course if the colour had been completely heinous, it would have moved to the top of the list of priorities.

>> Choosing stone for your new build? Click here for help identifying undertones!

So, when I went out shopping for flagstone, I would have liked to install this bluestone (above). I loved the large scale size.

But it was all varying shades of greens, blues and orange-y gold tones. That would have looked very bad in front of my pinky taupe house.

When I arrived at Burnco, I found the colour that would work for my house. It’s called East Coast Brown (shown above).

I picked up a sample that I could use to find the steps for in front of my studio to coordinate.

East Coast brown obviously varies in shading like all natural stone does. This stone was black, brown, green grays, grayed purples and pink beige. When I saw this stone I took my sample and plunked it down. Too blue. You can see that my sample looks quite pink beige in comparison.

Never choose stone without bringing it home first to see how it relates to your exterior colours. It will be much easier to order 6 pallets of stone to be delivered in your front yard when you know it’s the right colour.

Compare, compare, compare. Choosing colour without comparing will make you look like a novice.

Find out how to compare colours here.

We ended up with treads instead as I could not find steps to match. In the end all the steps including the extended portico are the same colour and coordinate perfectly with the house. Of course, it better or I should find a new day job, haha.

Here’s Kyle measuring for the installation. He did a beautiful job, we love the final result.

Here’s the Salt Spring Island sand that Kyle used underneath the flagstone. Notice the old and skinny post holding up the portico.

I thought it was fascinating how strong the color of all the different stones were when it was being installed. And then how uniform they started to read once the sand was in between the stones and we planted Thyme and Alyssum to grow between the stones.

And here’s before picture again.

MaryAnne designed a spot for a bench because there is a pretty, mountain view in front of our house.

The pathway will look like this (above) eventually. . . can’t wait! MaryAnne keeps telling me I have to be patient, “It’s not like placing a lamp with an end table somewhere and suddenly you have an entirely different room”, she says. “It takes approximately three years for everything to look really beautiful.”

Patience, patience, she tells me all the time, haha!

UPDATE:

Here’s what it looks like in the summer of 2015:

I think our thyme needs a little trim!

The white Cosmos daisies will be replaced by Perennials in the Spring, that’s when we’ll install them.

Here’s a closeup of my Shasta Daisies and White Hydrangeas. Do you see the theme here? I have always dreamed of having an all white garden. All white tulips in the Spring, I can hardly wait!

Another Update:

Here’s my white tulips in the Spring

Have a great week everyone! Here’s a photo shoot of my garden in the summer of 2014 if you haven’t seen it yet!

Related posts:

How to Choose the Colour of your Gentek Gutters

What Colour should your Concrete Driveway be?

If you would like your home to fill you with happiness every time you walk up to the front door, become a client. Online or In-person.

Download my eBook, How to Choose Paint Colours – It’s All in the Undertones to get my complete step-by-step system on how to get colour to do what you want.

To make sure the undertones in your home are right, get some large samples!

If you would like to learn how to choose colour with confidence, become a True Colour Expert.