The next time I decorate by a colour of the year will be the first time. Don't hold your breath. I have nothing against this particular colour but it doesn't work with all the things I've collected over the years, and I am not about to discard carpets bought after hard bargaining with dubious merchants in Istanbul or Islamabad because they don't "go" with a paint colour that someone voted "colour of the year." In its place, I think the colour would be quite nice (better than this years choices, certainly). It's just that my place isn't the right place for it.

Well, I did a trial with a few tiles and then covered them with polyurethane. The trial didn't necessarily go entirely to plan but I was able to establish that PU will be too soft. Epoxy is likely to yellow even indoors, so that leaves me with the following solution: 1. make the tiles thicker (not a big deal) use tile selection and a thicker tile bed to enable a relatively flat surface to be made 3. seal it with a thin polyurethane to protect from mess Thanks for the contributions.

Suggest rather than hanging g plants that you plant climbers eg a grapevine or bougainvillea into a half wine barrel or into other large pots or elsebreak up the concrete around the car port posts so plant a climber. A pandorea would be nice.Re earlier comment : forget nasturtiums unless for pots of annual colour as they are short living annuals only. You need sturdy perennial climbers to grow over and around the car port to soften it. Replace the white balustrade with something modern and place some lArge modern pot plants with large greenery on the balcony also to soften it. I would suggest a warm cream in place of the stark white to blend with the red brick. They greys and charcoals eg monument are verycookie cutter and a current trend that we are all heartily sick of. Using them will date the house very quickly.

I look at the first picture , and the most noticeable thing ( in a good way ) is the letterbox -- its an offwhite by the looks of it . So I'd do all the trim in that , and it even works with the roof ( sort of ) . The garage door is okay as it is -- the lighter tones elsewhere will balance that IMO . Ideally , I'd look at changing the garage door to a cedar timber at some stage -- again that would work with the roof , bricks , trim , etc . Probably just me , but I'm with you about going darker -- it may look 'dingy' , but none of them seem a fit with the roof IMO . Even something like surfmist ( off-white with a slight blue tinge ) doesn't gel in my mind . If you had the budget , and did want to look more modern , THEN maybe go a charcoal like monument , BUT with the cedar ( or cedar stained ) garage door , and 15 or so 40x40 battens , again cedar stained , basically the length of the 3 right side poles , so there's still that 2 metres or so in the middle that is 'open' . The cedar door on the left , and battens on the right , will visually look reasonably balanced and modern , without being too symetrical . The downside is it will cut down the light a bit , so depends if thats worth more than looking modern .