I love the option to work in a private office while still feeling connected to the larger open plan space. And who doesn't want a huge blackboard to creatively brainstorm?

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?)

Hi Jo Jo, My camera is sick I will see if I can get my son to take one for you. but in the meantime, check out the Sentosa Resort where Trump and KIm had their meeting, beautiful classic style buildings, white with red tiled roofs and black gutter, stunning. I find that a lot of houses in Australia have their character removed so as to be on Trend, so silly cheers

Just as a tip, those dark colours in your light brick arent' grey, they are a deep purple/brown also known as Burnt Umber. The midtone colour in that brick is also a purple brown in a natural mineral, in artists land that colour is called Indian Red, other similar hues are perylene maroon and piemontite. I'm an artist so very used to seeing different colours and their undertones. Colours that will go with that will be blacks that are actually red or purple based. So NOT monument which is a blue based charcoal. Blacks come in many different tones and it's important to match the undertone to your brick for colour harmony. Blacks which are complementary or blue based will stand out more but may not go as well. Which is why the grey blind seems uninspiring, it's a blue based grey. I'll name some colours in the Taubmans brand. I didn't pick Dulux because it has an abyssmal colour selection atm. Phantom Myst and Fable would both be good blacks to use on your home. Ruby Rose and Redwood and Russet stone would all go with the brick colours. Unless you train your eye to see hues and undertones it's very difficult to spot them which is why a colour consultants have a job. If you're interested learning colour mixing is fascinating there are even hues like red-blues which sounds paradoxical but ultramarine is actually a red based blue' A hack for creating colour palettes super easy. If you have Photoshop you can show it a photo and it will automatically create a perfectly co-ordinated colour palette for you of 6 or so colours which are exact matches to the colours in the photos. Any photo at all, and it will spit out pantone colour codes for you that you can take to paint shop and have them mix up. It picks up some dark, mid and light tones and you can have it create monochromatic, complementary, split coplementary etc palettes that work beautifully.