Hi, go to "photos" at top of this page , select exterior and traditional seperately from the filters, and save photos to a new ideabook on your homepage. This will help you to know what you like.

I live in a townhouse complex and the gutters, garage door etc, will need repainting soon. The body corporate has a wide range of colours - based on colourbond - which we can choose from. I grabbed swatches of possible colours and tested them against the yellowy gold bricks. The colours I liked best didn't look right and one I'd discounted did. So try and see what seems to work to you; squint if necessary but stand back a bit and see The two biggest colours are the brick and the roof, so see what works with them. I suspect black will be too stark a contrast.

Hi Pottsy99, thanks so much for your thoughtful response! You are perfectly right about that infill panel and the original steps which had been removed - goodness knows what was going through people's heads to do this to an old house. I do intend to reinstate the stairs - and link to the front garden which is north-east facing so will be perfect for an informal edible garden. I'm thinking of finding some original encaustic tiles to do the porch floor. It's a good idea to reinstate the steps in concrete - I was thinking about timber on a steel frame (for costs) however concrete will give a more stable feeling . This old California Bungalow however has an perplexing design in that there appear to be two entrances - apparently this was not that unusual for California Bunglalows. The main hallway runs off the side entrance, whereas these steps which come from the front garden lead straight into the loungeroom, with no hallway. So I intend to keep the main entrance to the side, and make the front entrance relate directly to the front garden, using plants and lighting to direct people to the main entrance. anyhow, in regards to the colour pallette, I love your idea of a burgundy roof, however I'm going to tone it down a bit as there's a lean-to at the back where I can have some fun with colour. For street appeal I'm going to keep it toned down - the setting is an Australian bush garden, and I'm looking at a relaxing pallette of greys which I think will make the red bricks sing as well. I've had the red bricks and mortar colour-matched at the hardware store, and there are red/yellow/black tones in them. So the greys will be warm/ olive-greenish. The light colour will be a lighter hue of the mortar (very light beige). The front door will be bright red, with warm white/very light beige trim. thanks again for your thoughts :-)

I saw these today and they seem to match well with our wall bricks and roof colour and well priced too. Now I think I'll consider retaining wall options and compare to brick. https://tilemarket.com.au/product/trevi-grey-external-300x300/ Edit: definitely going with brick I think