Here at Vogue Homes, we’re suckers for a well-balanced and appealing facade. The best part is, it’s so easy to achieve! Here’s an easy to use guide to ensuring your house is the best-looking one on the street.
When it comes to an impressive facade, it all comes down to the mix of textures and colours and how they are applied. As a general rule, our design expert, Kathleen Aked, recommends committing to no more than three feature textures. Here, we’re going to use the HIA Award Finalist for the Display Home of the Year 2019; the Sevilla on Display at HomeWorld Emerald Hills (Leppington), as a case study to explore how this works.
For this home, we quickly identified the key distinguishing external features as the bricks, render and cladding. Knowing this home was to be built on a corner block and seeing that the plan provided intricate angles and layering, we were excited to get started on the textures and finishes!
Bricks: Austral Bricks La Paloma Azul
This is a beautiful brick to work with (and is a favourite of our designer, Kathleen)! The finish provides a smooth, yet soft, iridescent appearance. We knew that this, along with a grey mortar, would be the perfect base to build on to get the finish we were hoping to achieve.
Render: Acrylic Render in Taubmans Salinger (Quarter Strength) and Colorbond Monument
Acrylic render is a great alternative to cement render. It’s less inclined to crack and break away due to its plastic-type properties – making it more tolerant during the moving and settling of the house. Acrylic render is applied in the colour specified, rather than being painted after it has dried, enabling a faster finish time.
For this facade, it was important that the render was textured. Acrylic render has a rough surface while still appearing to have a shine to it. This means that it accentuates and lifts the colour, as opposed to the usual matte colour and finish of a cement render (which would have been suitable for a differently-styled facade).
We chose two colours here, as we were working with a big home with varied layers. We felt it was important to honour these layers by spreading out the colour, so that no one area felt too light, or too dark.
Cladding: Cemintel Territory Woodlands Teak
Facades are often associated with harsh materials, which makes perfect sense as these materials need to stand the test of time and be weather-resistant. As Emerald Hills Estate was originally tree-dense land, we wanted to pay homage to the area, while ensuring the textures on our facade still played into one another seamlessly. A timber-look cladding was quickly chosen and once the Cemintel Territory Teak was teamed with the bricks and render, we knew we were onto a winner. The variance in colour and finish of the material closely replicates that of real timber.
Finishes: Garage Door, Roof, Window Frames
It is important that you also consider items such as the garage door, roof and window frames. In the case of our award-winning Sevilla home, these were accounted for in our overall design.
Despite the fact that these things were made of steel or aluminium, we were able to retain the colour palette from the main textures to achieve consistency throughout the home. This was done by teaming the cladding finish with the render colour and applying it to the garage and entry doors. By combining these materials we were able to create balance, without detracting from the main features.
Your Turn!
You can use our case study to help you design the perfect facade for your home too!
Our wonderful designer, Kathleen, recommends these three things:
● Choose your three main textures
● Research the best materials to suit your look and feel
● Use colour consistently across various materials
Building a new home? If you’re looking for some advice on your home selections or have any other questions about our exterior texture options, contact us to talk to one of our consultants who will be only too happy to answer any questions that you may have.
