Choosing gray exterior paint or siding for your home creates instant curb appeal since it stands as one of the universally appealing colors. Check out our list of inspiring ideas!
Choosing gray exterior paint or siding for your home creates instant curb appeal since it stands as one of the universally appealing colors. Gray comes in a plethora of shades and hues. Whether you adore dark gray with its near-black appearance or a light, nearly blue-grey that evokes steely water, you can paint a home exterior in that shade, and most people will find it attractive.
Table of Contents show
What is the Appeal of a Gray House?
Gray provides a bold look without using what Bob Vila refers to as “foreboding black.” You can use a dark gray in place of black and choose black as your trim color. Long considered drab, gray painted houses have made the transition from industrial use to residential favorite for a multitude of reasons, explains home designer Karen Haller. According to Haller, the color gray evokes security, a sense of belonging, and acceptance. The color says inclusion.
Depending on the shade of gray you favor, you can draw the exterior color inside your home, too, using similar wall and ceiling paints, as well as furnishings and rugs. Choose from warm grays with their yellow base or cool grays with their blue base. Your accent tones depend on the hue of gray chosen. Light gray houses work best with white or dark gray trim.
Gray provides an understated elegance that creates an almost universal appeal. The un-color works on any part of the home’s exterior – the roof, the siding, the trim, the steps, the porch. Because of its neutral standing in the color wheel, you can pair it with nearly any color and not go wrong. Since it comes in either true gray, yellow-gray, or blue-gray tones, sticking with colors in the same family, such as a light or dark blue with a blue-gray creates depth and complements one another.
One popular way to add a pop of color to a gray home is to choose a door in a bright color, such as red or yellow. This can also add to the curb appeal of the home, since you can match the door color to your front yard plantings.
Many Ideas for Gray Houses
While any single location likely has limited home ideas, a quick search the world-over turns up numerous ideas for gray house exterior options. While siding might prevail in your hometown, you don’t have to stick with what everyone else is doing. You can come up with a unique idea that lets you express your personality while developing a gorgeous living space for yourself.
As grey has popularized as an exterior home color, the creativity of its use has grown. Designers find new ways to integrate it seasonally and each new development or custom home seems to utilize the color in a new way. Europeans can draw from American design and vice versa. Both sides of the pond can offer ideas that can foster architectural growth locally and encourage a more diverse design environment. While the mid-to-late-20th century encouraged large-scale building developments, in which each home resembled the other, the 21st century can foster a new era of ecological, neutral and unique buildings.
Two-Story Modern Cottage
This modern cottage home combines a slate gray exterior paint with white trim for a fresh look that evokes the ocean. The bright blue entry door continues this theme.
Two-Story Blue-Gray Contemporary
The rambling roominess of this northwestern home blends a light grey roof with blue-grey siding, and white trim for curb appeal. The brickwork extends to the front columns of the porch stoop.
Light Gray Contemporary
Blend modern lines with contemporary styling using light grey siding with complementary brickwork for this exterior.
Gray and Cream Contemporary
The contrasting cream bricks and columns of this home accent and lighten the darker grey main exterior color of this two-story slate grey and cream contemporary with a staggered, two-car garage.
Gray Three-Level Craftsman-Style Home
Enjoy warm weather on the spacious front porch of this grey three-story craftsman-style home. Its black shutters and white trim add interest to the façade.
Two-Tone Brick Exterior
This red and gray brick Georgian colonial home provides a roomy two-stories in stately repose.
Gray Rustic Contemporary Home
This home mixes rustic and contemporary styles and mixes light and dark grays with gray, white, and cream brick for exterior wainscoting.
Gray Brick and Siding
This gray brick home artfully added a three-car garage with siding but continued the brickwork only to knee-height on the garage support walls. Its blue garage doors liven up the home’s façade.
Neighborhood Association Friendly Paint Job
This cream, gray, and white paint combination provides interest while blending with any neighborhood association rules.
Sophisticated Contemporary Design
You’ll find nothing boring in this contemporary design mixing gray as the main exterior color with black accents. Its many large windows allow streams of light that frame views of its manicured lawns and show how gray houses with black trim evoke sophistication.
Gray New England-Style Home
Enjoy nights on the spacious front porch of this New England-style two-level home. It works perfectly in the city, in town, or as a beach house.
Classic Gray Tones for Townhouses
A dark gray home and a light gray home banks the ends of these townhouses, proving that you don’t need a bright or garish color to stand out from the crowd.
New England Meets Mid-Century Modern
Not every New England-style home provides Gothic styling, too. You can find them with a mid-century modern influence, like this efficient design with a small sitting porch.
Gray Snout Ranch Home
This gray snout ranch home uses white bricks as an accent to create interest in an otherwise unassuming home.
Gray Suburban High Ranch
You could easily open a bed and breakfast in this gray suburban high ranch with a two-car garage. Its light gray siding evokes an East Coast beach house feel.
Gray Masonry Two-Level Home
Regular maintenance proves key to keeping this historic gray building in top condition. Its masonry work requires regular touch-ups.
Tiny Gray Houses Make Ideal Guest Houses
Build this modest gray tiny house as a mother-in-law apartment or as a vacation getaway where land sells for a premium. Tiny houses include all the needed rooms, such as kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, without extra rooms.
Lightest Gray Bauhaus-Style Homes
The Bauhaus-style tiny house provides never-ending vistas through its all-glass front. You can pull shut the blinds for privacy, but on the water, who’s looking? The light grey paintwork on these breathtaking homes compliments the water on which they’re built.
Gray Wheeled Tiny House
Put your tiny house on wheels for traveling anywhere you want to go. Unlike an RV, builders craft these homes from the same materials as a regular house. The only difference is it has wheels instead of a foundation. Its gray front and back with white sides and door add interest to the latest trend in affordable, ecological housing.
Gray Tiny Cottage
Vacation homes don’t have to be huge to enjoy, as this gray and white cottage with geometric windows proves. Its tiny porch uses gray picket fencing as its railing.
Gun-Metal Gray Contemporary European Home
Contemporary design and gun-metal gray paint give this roomy home a unique appearance. A matching wrought iron fence surrounds this home in Verneuil Sur Seine, France.
Gray/Blue Painted Siding on a Cottage
The siding on this small cottage appears grey at some points of the day, lightest blue at others, a trick of the light. Its multi-pane windows provide light and interest to an otherwise monochromatic façade.
Blue-Gray Rambling Mid-Century Modern Home
This rambling cottage in dark blue-gray provides a roomy front porch for summer entertaining. White trim and columns liven up the otherwise dark home colors.
Essential Gray Cottage
When there’s little room to build but you need family space, a one and a half-level cottage performs perfectly. Sided in light gray, it offers subdued tones with a darker gray roof and a matching chimney.
Gray Traditional Cape Cod Home
Light gray paint contrasts with a dark gray and black roof and matching black shutters on this traditional Cape Cod-style home.
Inspiring Two-Tone, Two-Level Russian Home
Take inspiration from the contrasting colors of this 19th century Borovichi home. Its brick-red bottom floor and weathered gray second-floor create a quaint, yet unique exterior appearance.
Two-Level Gray Home with Balcony
Gray and brick red also combine effortlessly in this two-level stunner with ample windows.
Slate Gray Mid-Century Modern Home
This all-gray American mid-century modern home combines a medium grey main paint color with a light gray for trim and porch columns. The slightly darker garage door creates a focal point of interest.
Modern Art Meets Contemporary Home
There’s nothing square about this three-color exterior paint job featuring equal parts grey and cream with vivid red accents. Gray railing encloses the second-floor balcony.
Gray House with Black Trim
You can easily design gray houses with black trim without losing curb appeal. Black and gray don’t overpower when you choose a light gray, such as the brick on this contemporary executive home.
Gray Stone Home with Large Gables
Black trim, windows, and doors enliven this light gray stone home with matching gray columns and yard steps. The black adds a contemporary feel to this stately home.
Brick and Gray Home with Decorative Trim Motif
The added second-level of this once all-brick home draws on the gray cement holding together its red bricks for the second-floor color. Its matching gray paint job with copious white decorative trim helps the addition blend with the original home.
Gray and Light Blue Combine on the Victorian Row Home
Blue and gray combine on the center row house on this San Francisco street. Decorative trim and a front spire complement this three-level home with a roomy front porch.
Row Homes with Various Shades of Gray
This quadplex of row homes proves you can paint a home solid gray and avoid a boring appearance. One neighbor went a little bright, but the other three homes each use a different shade of gray with white trim allowing each to express their personality while fitting into the neighborhood.
A Gray Chalet
You don’t have to live in the French countryside to want gray chalet vibes. Painting your chalet a solid color of light gray evokes the European countryside feel, especially when you add a matching terrace.
Gray Stones for an Italian Chalet Look
Choose a roughhewn gray stone exterior wall to re-create the appearance of an Italian chalet in any country. Contrast it with a dark wood door for optimum effect.
Gray Stone French Chalet
This Kerignon, France home uses large gray stones and traditional masonry techniques to create a sturdy and hospitable home. Pair painted gray window shutters with the stonework to create a subtle contrast.
White and Gray Contemporary
Modern gray houses typically contrast two main paint colors to create interest. The colors may differentiate the areas of the home, such as this home with its gray garage and entryway, juxtaposed with a white living space.
Gray and Blue Bungalows in a Row
Gray sides with a blue front and white trim create an orderly and subdued effect in this small neighborhood with well-kept yards.
Gray and White Contemporary Villa
Its gray and white color scheme with black accents helps this contemporary villa exude luxury. Its roof porch also includes a gray metal railing that matches the gray paint.
Rustic Gray Cabin
Dark gray ash wood or rough-hewn logs in their natural gray bark provide an ideal material and color for a rustic cabin. This design uses white trim on the windows and a dark gray stone for the chimney.
Contemporary Gray Beach House
With few windows and a fortress-like construction, this contemporary home with a sharply pitched roof provides views of the beach from glass windows and a view of the road from one vertical, highly placed window.
Scalloped Trim Accents on a Gray Chalet
A countryside chalet provides a quiet retreat with a small terrace in front. The gray roof and siding match, while the porch posts, window trim, and scalloped porch trim in white provide a contrast.
Gray Stone and Stucco Seaside Home
Beach houses can avoid boring exteriors with a mixture of materials that add texture complimentary to the sea. This home uses gray, brown, and cream brick on its first floor, while its second level uses gray stucco with dark brown trim that matches the brown brick. The chimney uses the same bricks as the first floor.
Bright Blue Door with Medium Gray Siding
This home uses a medium gray siding all over for its exterior, lightening its effect with white trim. The homeowner added pops of color by installing a bright blue door with a
sunny, yellow wreath. Potted plants surround the top porch step in colors to match the door and its wreath.
Shades of Gray on a Stucco Contemporary
Gray on gray won’t seem boring when you mix textures. The smooth steel of this front door blends ideally with the rough stucco of the exterior walls. The two shades of gray complement one another in their contrast.
Pale Gray Americana
Contrasting a darker gray roof with a pale gray exterior paint color evokes a traditional feeling from this modern farmhouse with an attached two-car garage. White trim and porch posts round out its endearing charm.
