By John Crosby Freeman
Desperation with California housing prices in 1978 drove Renee and Peter Shapiro to join another couple in a cooperative search for The American Dream. They found it in the Bronson Canyon area of Los Angeles: a two-story bungalow duplex built in 1910 on a triangular corner lot, with the ground-floor unit entrance porch on one street and the second-floor unit entrance porch on the other. When the other couple wanted to sell their unit, Renee and Peter bought it, rented it, and returned the duplex to its original Golden Rule — landlord occupancy.
Renee, in response to my request for “hopes & fears for all the years,” wrote the following: “I am afraid that if the colors are too muted and earthy, the house will recede into anonymity and look ugly and boring. I fear that in making the house, with color, an organic, integral part of our landscape, it will look more like a dry rock under a desert sky instead of a wet rock in a subtropical forest.
“I hope to create a vibrant harmonious color scheme to bring out its tasty architectural details. I hope color will make the house feel as comfortable, warm and enticing on the outside as it feels on the inside. I do not want a red, green, white, blue or gray bungalow. I want more earthy tones but don’t want colors that look like smog. I do not want to repeat the mission red that I now have, anywhere on the house. I do not want to be tyrannized by its red roof, either.”
Renee is properly concerned with a dilemma peculiar to owners of bungalows and other kinds of Arts & Crafts homes. She wants to unify her house with its environment but she also wants it to be, in Mae West’s famous words, “looked over instead of overlooked.” I applaud Renee’s avoidance of primary or spectrum colors and achromic or colorless white and gray as well as excessively grayed colors. She wants her house to glisten, but not glitter; she wants it to be festive, but not frivolous.
Excellent color selections fail to maximize architectural potential when placements are made with inconsistent architectural logic. Two common blunders are: First, repeating a light body color as secondary trim or accent color on ornamental details within the dark trim color, and the second is when the body is dark, using a light trim color on all the trim, both structural and ornamental.
Double-Body Color Scheme
The first thing I notice about the Shapiro Bungalow is the presence of two wall coverings: clapboards with mitred corners on the first floor and shingles with alternating exposures above. I immediately think: “Double-Body Color Scheme” European medieval folk buildings used more than one material to protect wall structure. The double-body tradition was adopted by designers of early 19th-century Regency and Victorian cottage ornées, promoted in the late 19th century by Queen Anne architects and ready-mixed paint companies, and survived into the early 20th century as an honest means to beautify simple houses and emphasize the horizontal lines of bungalows.
There are three double-body color options: tint and shade of the same semi-neutral color, looking, in Renee’s nice phrase, “like a dry rock under a desert sky”; complementary positive colors of equal value, looking like a Late Victorian Queen Anne: two semi-neutral colors of different value, the most effective, varied and popular opinion of the 20th century.
Which Goes Where?
Exterior painting guides of the Bungalow Period contain conflicting advice. Some put darker color down, others put it up. When the lower story is covered with clapboards and the upper story covered with shingles, there are four reasons to recommend color placement of lighter down and darker up:
- Foundation plantings are more outstanding against lighter color.
- The Colonial Revival of the period, in which double-body bungalows symbolically participated, associated shingles with the grayed medium-to- dark wood colors of unpainted, 17th-century, New England houses.
- Clapboards were associated with the light, semi-neutral colors of painted, 18th-century, Georgian houses.
- The lighter down, dark up energizes architectural drama — a small area of light color on the first floor appears to be compacted by a larger area of darker color above.
Gables & Eaves
Now for some architectural comments. The half-timbered gables of the bay window and porches are invigorated by club-headed daggers of sawn-out ornament. To restore the Papa-Mama- Baby Bear relationship between the gables, the peak of the main gable wall needs plastic surgery: lower the horizontal frieze board to connect the brackets; install raking frieze boards, half- timbering, and panels with sawn-out dagger ornaments. This permits all gables to be painted the same trim and accent colors; it also avoids temptation to paint the lower gables with colors different than those of the main gable.
Japanese/Swiss projecting eaves are supported by bracketed cantilevered beams, and decoratively- profiled exposed rafter tails, which ornamentalize the ceilings. Beams and their brackets should be painted the same wood color to convey the impression that both are the same material. Raking cornices of the gables and exposed rafter tails should be painted the same color for the same reason; but they could be a different wood color than the bracketed cantilevered beams. This color is the major trim color and is applied to the gables as well as most structural details. Ceilings of the eaves must be light enough in value to contrast the rafter tails, perhaps a pale tint of the major trim color or the bracketed beam color, if given a special wood color.
Windows Can Be Special
It is tempting to give windows on each floor unique color schemes; but, unless they form independent horizontal bands of surface ornament, it is better architectural logic to paint them the same to affiliate the floors separated by different body colors. Sash does not have to be given a special color and the putty lines picked out, as in the Late Victorian manner. They can be painted the same as the window casing; or they can be painted a yellowish white, which was a Late Victorian option when the window casing color was dark.
Sash is the place for an unorthodox color, should you desire one in your exterior decoration. You might want to use an unorthodox color, for instance, when sash patterns merit extra attention or windows are closely spaced. Also, when the window casing color has been adjusted to harmonize with the sash. All these are O.K. to do if it doesn’t disrupt the general color scheme.
Porch Pillars & Floor
Pillars supporting the porches of the Shapiro house are solid wood. But when I observe their squared-off and primitive outline, I visualize stone. A stone color will monumentalize the entrances, and it can be repeated on the concrete floors and the box pillars of the adjacent piazza railing.
This special color also visually strengthens the porch’s support of the cumbersome enclosed balcony addition, which looks like a little elephant carrying an overscaled howdah on its back. Use the lighter body color of the first floor and the lighter secondary trim colors of the windows to disconnect it from the darker colors of the second floor, even though the original balcony portion is shingled.
Bungalow Colors
During the early 20th century, “Bungalow Paint” was sold in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle by Bass-Hueter Paint, which was owned by the California division of the National Lead Company. Alas, there was nothing innovative about “Bungalow Paint” colors, which were common browns, tans, reds, buffs and greens offered by paint companies everywhere in their ordinary color cards. Paint company product literature and color illustrations in catalogues of prefabricated housing from Aladdin or Sears were not innovative, either. They usually show ordinary body colors trimmed with white. Artistic alternatives for bungalows are now available in the Preservation Palette of Sherwin-Williams, which features sixteen “Roycroft Arts & Crafts” colors. Roycroft Associates and Sherwin-Williams Archivist Pat Eldredge documented the colors using historic buildings on the Roycroft Campus in East Aurora, New York.
Tile Color
Choosing a body color for shingles can be a simple and conservative matter, if one selects an attractive weathered wood color like alight- medium grayed brown Roycroft color seductively named “Weathered Shingle.” Or it can be complex and innovative, if one selects an attractive Late Victorian tile color like the aptly-named Rookwood Terra Cotta.
My thoughts were stimulated by Renee’s remarks about wet versus dry semi-tropical Rocks. “Wet” in paint terminology means “gloss”; and gloss is more typical of glazed tiles than weathered shingles. The ordinary red of roofing tiles was out of the question, because the cumulative effect would be overpowering and Renee has had her fill of mission red.
The cumulative effect of Rookwood Terra Cotta could be modified by using a subtle tint of it on the wider bands of shingles. Perhaps a premium would not be charged if the painter uses two trays for the colors, two rollers of different widths for application and two brushes for smoothing. Little splatters of one color falling on the other would enhance the effect without being noticed from the ground; so the painter should be able to move along at only a slightly slower rate than normal.
Trim Colors
Rookwood Terra Cotta is contained and defined by a Late Victorian deep and dark maroon named Rookwood Dark Red, put on the raking cornices, exposed rafter tails and half-timbered gables. To provide proper emphasis for the windows and pleasantly modify the Rookwood Terra Cotta wall, use a Roycroft medium brown with a maroon cast named Quartersawn Oak. which can also be used on the bracketed beams. A soft, light-brown Roycroft color named Craftsman Brown can be used on the sash, as well as the ceilings of the eaves. Daggered panels in the gables can be accented by a Roycroft light ochre-yellow named Birdseye Maple.
The remaining colors are: a yellowish-white named Roycroft Vellum for the body color of the clapboards: a Roycroft light- medium brownish gray with a maroon cast named Hammered Silver for the porch pillars and concrete porch floors. The howdah can be given Roycroft Vellum shingles, Quartersawn Oak major trim and Craftsman Brown secondary trim. This scheme uses the ordinary number of five colors (body, trim, window, ceiling and floor) with an extra body color and an accent color. Combining trim colors in different relationships makes it appear to use more than seven colors.
Historic Paint Resource Guide (Updated 2010)
American Seal
1 Northern Drive
Troy, NY 12182-1841
(518) 235-0890
Roycroft Associates
3 I South Grove Street. Dept. AB
East Aurora, NY 14052
(716) 655-0562. (716) 652-3333
Dunn - Edwards
Corporate Office, Dept. AB
4885 East 52nd Place
Los Angeles. CA 90040
(800) 733-3866
John Crosby Freeman, is color design consultant and co-author of the Joy of Color.’ Interior and Exterior Colors for America ‘s Romantic Homes, 1900-1950.
