STORY BY: Sharon Grech, Benjamin Moore Colour & Design Expert and Regular Guest on CityTV’s Cityline ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF BENJAMIN MOORE

With the better weather here, we all want to maximize our outdoor living areas! Here are some tips on how to use colour to make all your open-air spaces more inviting from early spring to late fall.

Curb appeal: Focus on your homes smaller, yet interesting features such as front doors, window frames, shutters, garage doors, pillars and even porch ceilings. Giving these smaller accents a fresh coat of paint and colour can go a long way towards transforming your homes aesthetic. Shutters and front doors are focal points that can handle more daring colour choices than the homes dominant cladding, so consider a stronger contrast to highlight these architectural details. A porch ceiling is an unexpected place for colour that adds some whimsy while you enjoy the view. Blue is a popular and traditional porch ceiling colour as it feels like an extension of the blue sky but even a more subtle colour that’s a shade darker or lighter than the cladding adds interest. Porch furniture is another area where you can easily go a bit bolder with your colour choice while still complimenting your exterior scheme.

*FRONT DOOR: Cactus Green 2035-20, SIDING: Edgecomb Gray HC-173, TRIM: Floral White OC-29*

*WALLS & TRIM: White Diamond OC-61, SHUTTERS: Bahaman Sea Blue 2055-40*

Deck it out: Staining is a great way to refresh and protect our outdoor wooden surfaces like decks, furniture and fences for the summer season and beyond. Just in time for the season, Benjamin Moore’s new Woodluxe Exterior Stain collection is available in 4 opacities including Translucent, Semi-Transparent, Semi-Solid and Solid. Create areas of interest with a two-toned stain treatment. A popular option is to apply a natural, lighter stain colour on the decking, with a darker, solid or semi-solid stain on vertical features like the railing. If your wood is new or in great shape, treat it with a simple translucent or semi-transparent stain. Semi-solid stains are great for covering imperfections, allowing some of the grain and texture of the wood to show through, while solid stains are more like paint and leave an opaque colour and texture. You can test the different translucencies and colours with pint sample cans. It’s always best to “try-before-you-buy” as stain colours can look quite different on every species of wood.

SIDING, COLUMNS & WINDOW TRIM: Ashland Slate 1608, DECK: Celtic Blue ES-31

DECK & SIDING: Natural Cedartone ES-45, SOFFIT, RAILING & TRIM: White Heron OC-57

Create an outdoor oasis: Injecting pops of colour into your landscape is one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to elevate a backyard and make it feel like an extension of your home. Today’s outdoor furniture and accessories are hard to decipher from those used inside, with material innovations, colours and design styles, so shop around you’ll be sure to find options to suit your favourite style. You can’t go wrong with the Canadian go-to of brightly coloured Muskoka chairs to make an intimate conversation area and create a vibrant focal point in the backyard. Of course, painting exterior furniture is a simple way to give a new look to and extend the life of existing pieces that just feel dated but otherwise are in great condition. Painted flower boxes, string lights and trendy weather resistant cushions are other great ways to make a backyard feel even more inviting.

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