Can I try a new facade colour before I paint the house?
Yes, but a facade is harder to judge digitally than an indoor wall: it is always seen in changing daylight, at a distance, and alongside neighbours and surroundings. A digital preview shows you the shape. The weather, the patina and the local context you still have to imagine yourself.
Short answer: Yes — several apps and programs let you place a new colour or a new facade material on a photo or a 3D model of the house, so you can see the whole before you decide. It is a good help for choosing a direction: light or dark, brick or render, cool or warm tone. It is a weaker help for the final decision, because facades are seen outdoors, in changing light, and because the material's texture — brick's rough surface, timber's grain, render's grain — is rarely part of the digital rendering.
Why is a facade harder to judge than an indoor wall?
An indoor wall is seen from a few metres away, in a room with a fairly stable light that you control yourself with curtains and bulbs. A facade is seen from ten, twenty, fifteen metres away, in light that changes hour by hour and season by season — and it is always seen together with something: the sky, the neighbour's house, the driveway surface, the roof, the window frames. A colour that looks calm on a screen at midday in sunshine can look quite different in overcast weather or at dusk. That makes a facade choice a bigger decision to trial digitally than an indoor wall.
The methods you can use to see the house in a new facade
- A physical test patch on the wall. A painted patch of about 1×1 metre somewhere on the actual facade, seen in several light conditions over a couple of days. The most reliable method, because it is the real material on the real surface.
- Photo montage. A photo of the house with the facade coloured digitally, often with simple tools in an image editor or an app made for the purpose. Quick, but tied to the light and angle of that one photo.
- A 3D model of the house. The whole house built as a model, where the facade can change colour and material, and you can view it from several angles and in changing light and seasons. Requires that the house already exists as a 3D model — either measured or drawn.
What does the house look like in red brick (or another material)?
Facade materials read differently at full scale than they do on a small sample. Brick has a visible texture of mortar joints and bricks that gives depth and shadow a flat digital colour does not capture. Render is more uniform, but catches light and shadow differently depending on whether the surface is smooth or grainy. Timber has a grain and a growth ring that break up the surface. Fibre-cement panels sit somewhere in between — even, but with visible joints.
That means a digital view showing "red brick" typically shows a uniform red surface, while the real brick facade will have variation in colour from brick to brick, and a pattern of joints that breaks up the surface. Use the digital view to decide whether you like the direction at all — red, yellow, dark, light — and save the final judgement of texture and tone for a physical sample or a visit to a brick supplier, where you can see the material for real.
What a digital facade view cannot do
- Show patina and age. Fresh paint looks different from paint that has stood for five years and caught rain, soot and algae. A digital view always shows the day-one version.
- Show the material's texture in detail. As described above — a flat colour is not the same as a surface with depth.
- Show the house in its real context. The neighbour's house, the street's other facades and the trees standing in front all belong to how a facade colour is experienced in reality — they are rarely part of a digital model.
- Decide whether you are even allowed to change the facade. That is not a question a colour choice can answer — it belongs to the next section.
Why does the same colour look different on the north and south facade?
A house usually has four facades, and each faces a different way relative to the sun. The south facade gets direct sunlight for most of the day and therefore looks lighter and warmer in the same colour. The north facade gets only indirect daylight and can make the same shade look colder and darker. This is one reason a digital view — which often shows the house from only one angle in one light — can give a wrong impression of how the colour is experienced all the way round the house. If you want certainty, look at the physical sample on both the sunny and the shaded side, not only where it is easiest to paint a test patch.
What does it cost to change your mind along the way?
Facade paint and materials are a large and visible investment, and a wrong choice is more expensive to correct than a wrong indoor wall colour — the scaffolding has to go up again, and a whole house has to be repainted, not just one room. That is the main reason to spend proper time on the digital and physical trial before work starts, and to get a written quote describing precisely which product and which shade is used, so you can check it against the sample afterwards.
Should you ask anyone first?
In many places, a change to the house's exterior — a new facade colour, a new material, altered windows — is subject to local rules, especially in conservation areas, dense residential neighbourhoods or homeowners' associations with shared facade requirements. That applies no matter how good a digital view looks. Always check with the local planning authority or your homeowners'/residents' association before ordering paint or materials, if the house lies in an area with that kind of requirement.
What HouseSense does
In HouseSense you can give the house's exterior a surface, a colour and a frame colour, so you can see the whole house from outside — in the 3D model and in the 3D walkthrough, which shares the same facade. It is the same principle as with indoor wall colours: a quick way to compare directions before you decide. The model shows the shape and proportions correctly, because it is built on the house's own measurements, but it does not — like all digital facade views — show the material's texture in the detail the eye sees it in reality.
How to land on the final facade
- Use a digital view to narrow the field: light or dark, brick or render, warm or cool tone.
- Check whether the change requires permission from the local planning authority or a homeowners' association.
- Order physical samples of the materials you are considering, and view them on the house in several light conditions over a few days.
- Ask a painter or bricklayer about durability and maintenance for the chosen solution before you order in bulk.