I prefer white as if you get sick of grey cladding in10 years you might be able to paint it another colour. Both are nice it is a matter of taste.

Thank you so much everyone for taking the time to respond. Your first photo siriuskey is the colour scheme I'd love to go with so good to hear that you'd think it would match with the blonde brick. I also like the shale grey roof idea butterflyroof and you're right that you don't see much of the roof at all (mainly when looking out the upstairs bedrooms). The olive green is definitely another possibility to look at oklouise and I've made a note to use 'mid-century' in search terms. Definitely plan to pressure clean bricks and a bit relieved to hear that leaving them is the better option. I'm still finding it hard to imagine a darker grey cladding like monument with the blonde brick debluc but it's certainly been suggested a few times so I'll keep searching for inspiration. Thanks again :) (attached is a photo of a house near us that I like and that has a brownish tinge to the cladding that would hopefully work with our bricks as it seems to work with their sandstone - maybe dune colourbond?)

Thanks everyone, yes I love the look of old shearing sheds, which is the rustic look I'd ideally like to achieve, however the house design is a bit more modern - it is a long rectangular shape like a shed but the roof is curved at the top (like the Glen Murcutt house in Kempsey) instead of the traditional pointed gable. We're actually thinking of using the Ritech product for the roofing instead of Colorbond, as it has a high bushfire rating and comes in Colorbond colours. We like the darker grey roof because it doesn't stand out too much in the bush landscape and therefore 'anchors' the house. So as much as I love rusty gal, I think we will have to leave it to the outsheds (our current cottage 'the shack' is clad in the old galvanised roofing, which we replaced with a Windspray colorbond roof). It looks great because it's already rustic. I'd also like to use it as a feature inside the house (e.g. behind a woodstove) but don't have enough to clad the new house. The Dune colour is a good match with the creamy grey trunks of the Brittle gums, which is why I thought of using that. I also read somewhere that it's the best match with traditional gal (which I've tested and tend to agree with, although it doesn't have the rustic colour variation). Dune is also a good tonal contrast with the darker bricks and timber, so I'll probably go with that for the cladding as we don't really want a light roof, despite better reflection properties. I'm hoping having the high roof inside (to 4.8m at highest point of the curve) and good insulation will mean a darker roof is okay. My only real concern now is that I can't get standard aluminium windows in the colour Dune (they come in Shale or Woodland grey). I might be able to have them made in non-standard colours, but it would cost a lot more. Hence I'm thinking Woodland grey for the window frames, but am not sure if this would make it look too busy (i.e. with the bricks, timber and lighter cladding).

Hi all, I can't seem to reply individually to your comments so here's a general one :) Thanks all for the suggestions and experience-I'm really intrigued by these suggestions of pavilion extensions, those links you attached Kate are super striking! Unfortunately for us we are on a fairly small block of land and one side of the house is a narrow driveway-we looked into building a garage/study on the ground but as we have to be 900mm from the neighbouring fence it was going to be very skinny and just not worth it. I appreciate the thoughts shared on keeping our feet on the ground but as we've two young kids and two dogs (and would love to have chickens again) I'm less and less inclined to give up more of the garden which is what we'd have to do if we extend out. Our verandah roof was done back in the 60's and slopes down and leaks in the rain so hence it needs to be lifted up if we were to build out. Kate, I LOVE your idea of the shed! We actually converted a massive steel shed into a gorgeous shed home when we lived in QLD on a massive rural block of land, loved how easy it was to 'knock' down a wall! :) Sadly we have learned the hard way that trying to save money by hiring a draftsperson that didn't ask us what our budget was has cost us time and money, but I guess in a way I'm grateful as this extra time has given me time to consider building up now instead of out. I'm getting a sense that it will be a lot more expensive to do so so might have to wait another 2-3 years to get re-finance happening. In the meantime we are making some changes to the current set up, slowly adding value and making it more enjoyable to live in :)