After great thought with the advice given & other researched sites, we have decided to not render our bricks. :) We have begun re painting our pergola from dulux lexicon to taubmans coffee cake - very similar to our window trims. It's a neutral stone/beige colour. We hope to paint our garage doors & gutters monument & probably the facia trims in coffee cake. Fingers crossed for it to look ok. Thanks again.

I'm personally not a fan of tile - very hard on the feet, I find - so I'd probably restrict tile to the wet areas and go for hardwood everywhere else. Our last home had wood in every room except the bathroom, and after 10 years it still looked fine. Even the kitchen looked good. That said, we didn't have kids running around in the house. Did (and still do) have a dog, though. Our current house has carpeting in the bedrooms, engineered wood in the living areas, and tile in the bathrooms and laundry. All three floor coverings have a similar greigish tone, so to my mind they look fine together, and meet the practicality and comfort criteria as well.

Hi, interestingly I have been grappling with this issue recently! For a contemporary design I have firmly decided that dark bronze or black frames suit much better as they are visually recessive and give the optical illusion of larger glazing and help create an indoor-outdoor connection. White frames tend to focus your eyes on the frames/window rather than the space and form, however you can get these to work if you use very slender frames (which are more expensive) or if you are purposefully using traditional design cues. I know this doesn't help as you already have the DA, so if you can go with the silver pearl that is a good option, and perhaps use the words "dark beige" to darken the render!

Dulux terrace white has a grey undertone, so should blend in well with the slate grey roof and carport roof. I would look at painting the front door slate grey to match other trims.