In our last post, I talked about using dark, natural colors to help blend modern houses into their surroundings.  Here is how it worked for our friends Ted and Sally’s Eichler home in Thousand Oaks:

We did it again with the parsonage house of the Swedenborgian church in San Francisco.  This house was built in 1895, but the concept still works.  Hopefully you'll agree it's easier on the eyes.

We really enjoy painting.  It can achieve enormous results with very little outlay.  Change can be good.

We are privileged to live in an Eichler house designed by A. Quincy Jones in the mid 1950’s.  He drew one of my favorite images of how single-family houses should behave.  

The top row shows the houses popping up out of a flat ground plane.  The bottom row shows the ground plane morphed into small hills and berms, partially hiding the now lower-slung houses.  This was Jones’ preference, and mine, too.  Frank Lloyd Wright taught us to tie our buildings to the land, and it's always a good lesson.

Taking this thought a step further, our choice of colors should also work with nature, especially for a modern house.  Darker, earthier colors, found in nature, can give our buildings and their surroundings a richer feeling.  Which brings us back to our house: These before and after shots illustrate these points well.  We even have a little berm in front.