With Craftsman style homes being the most popular style of architecture for the past half decade, and having heard time and time again customers struggles with designing their perfect exterior, we thought it only fair to share a little wisdom that may help our readers who may be thinking of building a craftsman in the near future. The greatest design dilemma we see in our showrooms day to day is exterior texture & color selections, quantity, and contrast intensity.

Craftsman homes traditionally have a cozy feel, flow from outside to inside, have intimate scale, intricate wooden details, highlight gentle and traditional linear patterns, and feature a variety of textures including stucco, hardie, shingles, stone and bricks. There have been many revivals of the craftsman style and the newest revival which we are seeing now features a traditional white trim and light values and shades of grays and taupes for the main body colors. We also see in this newest trend of craftsman, the multi-tone color selections. This is where the greatest dilemma we hear on a daily basis is when it comes to this style.

How many textures do I put on my house? How many colors do I put on my house? And how high of contrast should I have?

Your shingle roof and your stone or brick wainscot (bought from Hearth and Home of course) are a given, that gives you two basic textures to start with.

Here comes the tricky part. When it comes to the other body colors and textures, this is where we see customers having difficulty.

We have put together some photo examples for each to give you a look at what the five main multi-tonal facades are, with varying levels of contrast in color and textures, to hopefully help you through the design process:

2 tone

2 tone using trim color as an accent body color

3 tone

3 tone using trim color as an accent body color

4 tone

We know it seems complicated but our expert design staff at our HHDU Stone Divisions with Design Centers are here to help you through it all and will have you one step closer to your dream home in no time. Stop by one of our locations today and see for yourself!