If Your Home is Brick, Cloud White is NOT the Best Trim Colour!

If your house exterior is brick, Benjamin Moore Cloud White is NOT the right trim colour. But here are a few trim colours that do work well with a brick exterior.

Photos by Maria Killam

For the record, this is not the first post I’ve written about the best exterior trim colours NOT being Cloud white.

BM Cloud White cannot possibly be a go-to white for the exterior of any home and certainly not brick homes. Like all the wonderful homes in Toronto (where I’m on a mini-vacation this week). Here is my take on the trim colours that do work well with a brick exterior.

But first, here’s one place where it might work… In this gray painted brick home (above), an off-white trim like Cloud White would actually be perfectly fine because gray and white are great together.  But overall, white is way too stark looking if your brick is rusty or more earthy (and unpainted).

Here are some examples of good (and not so good) trim colours on brick exteriors.

I adore black trim with orange brick but not without a healthy dose of another light coloured trim — otherwise it looks too harsh and starts looking very Halloween. Eek!

Rather instead, the above home with charcoal trim, BM Kendall Charcoal HC-166, is much softer than the all-black trim and casings of the house below:

If the grout in the above brick home was high contrasting and light, the all black trim would look much better.

Here’s a closer view of another  house with charcoal trim.

And here is another house with white trim that is way too stark for the house (shown below). The house, although pretty, would look even better with creamy trim like Benjamin Moore Lancaster Whitish HC-174 or Ashwood OC-47 instead of a bright white.

Here is a brick exterior with eggplant trim (BM Super Nova CC-990). These colours are my best guess as I snapped these photos on the fly without a fan deck.

If you look closely, this window trim has a pink undertone. I’m showing this because it relates to the pink brick so it actually works. A gray brown like BM Kingsport Gray HC-86 or BM Fairview Taupe HC-85 would also look good as a trim colour on this brick home.

In general, I prefer green trim colour over blue trim with orange brick. Green usually looks better and more organic. Here is a great comparison of 2 different greens. The one on the right (BM Cushing Green HC-125) is much bluer than the left side.

This sage green trim colour (BM High Park CC-620) looks like a colour from the 80s. But in a city full of brick homes, it works. It’s when it is the only colour on an office or apartment building like the Rogers building in downtown Toronto that it screams “I was built in 1985.”

If the brick on your house exterior is not rust or red, then you should consider the existing tones in the brick when choosing your trim colour, like in this home (above).

This house is obviously not brick but I took a picture because it was so pretty and obviously totally on trend right now – off-white exterior with black windows. Is this new trend taking over your neigbourhood too?

If your house is primarily brick, what colour is your trim? I’d love to know how you choose the trim colour too!

If you would like your Exterior to fill you with happiness every time you see it, contact me.