Choosing the right color of pavers for your project is not an easy task. Pavers can last for decades, so you will be stuck with bad aesthetics for years to come, given you have made a wrong choice. So, how to avoid those wrong choices? What color pavers go with a tan house, for example? How to approach the subject?
We have been asked this question countless times. The degree of importance of aesthetics might vary from homeowner to homeowner, but it is never irrelevant. People invest a great deal of time and consideration when thinking about color for pavers, and rightly so.
The goal of this article is to provide you with a guide on how to choose the right color of pavers according to your scenario, including what color pavers go with a tan house. So let’s get right to it and start by discussing some basic elements of color theory.
What Color Pavers Go With a Tan House? Basic Elements
There are basically two ways in which you can combine colors in your hardscape projects: blending or matching.
To understand how both work, we first have to understand the concept of color palettes. Palettes are combinations of colors that follow a specific design choice. There are many techniques you can use to create palettes, like analogous, complementary or monochromatic.
Adobe has an online color palette generator tool that can help you explore many combinations using different techniques. When it comes to hardscape, most palettes are creating using either the complementary or monochromatic techniques.
The reason for that is that in hardscape colors, less is more. You don’t want to use colors that are too bright and that fight for the spotlight. In fact, that is hard to achieve even if you wanted to. Hardscape elements usually go for more subtle color palettes.
The golden rule is to use one central, stronger color in the house itself and another lighter color of the same palette in both the roof and pavers. That creates a good “sandwich” blend, in which all elements will be harmonious in a very elegant setting.
For a tan house, for example, you could never go wrong with white roofs and pavers, or even some shade of gray. Either way, following that rule will easily help you choose a proper color for your pavers.
However, there’s a more important aspect than color at play when choosing pavers.
The Right Paver for the Job
Aesthetics is not everything. Pavers are important hardscape elements that need to do a specific job. They need to be durable, resistant and easy to maintain. When choosing the right type of paver, you get full value of it.
So the choice of material precedes color by miles. For example, let’s say you want to install pavers around your new pool. Even though you have found a brick paver that has the perfect color, they are not recommended for poolside installations.
In that case, travertine or porcelain are the way to go, so you might have to choose between a small array of options. The important part is knowing your color palette, have some ideas beforehand and hunt for the best possible color between the right choice of material for your installation.
That’s where knowing how to blend or match become important. If you can’t follow the roof-paver rule, you’ll have to do either one or the other.
Matching consists in picking color that belong to the same hue, but with different shades. Red, brown and salmon, for example. On the other hand, blending is picking colors that are opposite to each other, like yellow and blue.
Matching fall into the analogous and monochromatic approaches, while blending follows the complementary and compound color rules.
Professional Help
Installing pavers is never easy. From planning the installation, to choosing the right pavers and being ready for the specifics of the project scenario, many things can go wrong and be too much for a non-experienced person to handle.
As fun as it can be from a DIY perspective, the best course of action is still to ask for the help of a qualified hardscape professional. Professionals will have the experience to point you in the right direction when planning the installation and can help you create the perfect hardscape project.
Here at JS Brick, over our 22 years of experience, we have helped countless homeowners with their installations, and they always get astonished of how paver installations are much more complex than it seems at first glance.
We have also been called many times to fix some pretty awful and costly mistakes that could have easily been avoided given more time to plan and perform the installation. So we highly recommend you contact a professional in your area to help you.
In fact, if you happen to be around our area of activity, the Sarasota and Manatee counties, in FL, why not give us a call to help you?
Contact us right now at +1 941 586 9140 or email us at [email protected]. We would be happy to hear from you and help you with any hardscape need you might have.
