Looking for a classic exterior color palette that still feels fresh and modern? This warm White Duck palette, paired with a dark greige trim, might be exactly what you’ve been searching for.
Whenever we design a color palette for a client, we always start in the same place: the home’s hard finishes. On interior projects, that means elements like flooring and tile. On exterior projects, we’re looking at any brick or stone, the windows, and the surrounding landscape — the fixed features a paint color has to live alongside.
For the Denver home we’re featuring today, our starting point was the roof, which the clients were in the middle of replacing. The home also had red brick, but the clients wanted to paint over it to simplify and unify the overall look. Also, they didn’t like the brick!
In this case, our clients knew exactly what they were after: an exterior palette with the timeless appeal of a black-and-white scheme, only softer, warmer, and a little more welcoming.
Ready to see the full Sherwin-Williams White Duck exterior palette we designed — and find out whether this low-contrast look could be right for your own home? Keep reading for the full breakdown.
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About The Color Concierge
Our Colorado-based paint color consultants make finding the right paint colors for your home easy. Whether you’re painting the exterior or interior of your home, our simple yet effective process lets us get your paint color right the first time. We’ve helped thousands of homeowners transform their homes into a space they love. Learn more about ONLINE COLOR CONSULTATIONS today.
Sample The Best Exterior Paint Colors
We always recommend that you test paint colors (Article) in your home because lighting can completely change a color, both on interiors and exteriors.
In the old days, this meant we painted a large poster board with sample pots and a huge mess.
Now we have a better way to test paint, with Samplize Peel-and-Stick samples!
- Samples pre-painted with 2 coats of real paint from the manufacturer.
- Large 9” x 14” samples to see the color better in the lighting.
- Delivered overnight
- Colors are accurate
- Less expensive than painting a large poster board with sample pots
- No mess, and no toxic paint to dispose of
I use these in my color consulting practice for exact results. Discover Samplize peel-and-stick paint samples and sample all your favorite exterior house colors via the link below.
Project Spotlight: Sherwin-Williams White Duck Exterior Color Palette
The homeowners for this project came to us looking for an exterior makeover with paint colors that would better suit their home’s unique exterior.
Every home comes with its own quirks, and this Denver property had a few charming ones we wanted to highlight. The standout was an interesting turret topped with stained wood.
The home also had a small decorative diamond tucked into each gable, one of those lovely little features we spot every so often that most homeowners don’t even realize they have. It’s the perfect spot for a subtle accent.
As always when designing an exterior color palette, we started with the home’s fixed elements. In this case, these included the roof, red brick accents, and a white vinyl fence around the property.
The home started with black-brown roof shingles and large swathes of red brick. The home’s original warm white siding color was too dark and too creamy for the white fence, which looked stark and really discordant against the home.
The clients wanted their new palette to feel lighter and brighter. They swapped the original black-brown shingles for a lighter option and asked to paint their brick. While we often avoid painting red brick, in this case we agreed it was the right move to create a more simplified, cohesive palette.
The SW White Duck palette we designed for them, which features a medium taupe-greige trim and dark accents, absolutely brings the entire house to life!
SW White Duck Siding & Painted Brick
Sherwin-Williams White Duck (Article) is a gorgeous, creamy paint color perfect for exterior applications. While it’s often considered an off-white paint color, I consider it a complex cream: warm and muted without leaning toward yellow. This color will look almost beige inside, but like a lovely creamy white outside.
Sherwin-Williams White Duck (Sample) has an LRV of 74 and green undertones. It works really well with other warm, muted paint colors like grays and greiges. The green undertone is absolutely invisible in the bright Colorado sun.
On this client’s home, White Duck was the perfect balance between a warm exterior paint color and one that was still light enough to help the white vinyl fence recede into the palette – especially once we painted the brick.
If we had kept the brick, the home would have looked a lot like the SW Shoji White palette we designed for another client below.
This look is also really beautiful, but in this case our clients really wanted to simplify their palette overall and allow some of its unique details to pop against a white backdrop.
SW Mega Greige Trim & Garage Doors
We chose Sherwin-Williams Mega Greige (Sample) as a low-contrast trim color to help all those little elements pop.
Mega Greige is a mid-tone paint color, with an LRV of 37. It is a warm greige color, with clear taupe undertones that can also flash violet in certain light.
In this palette, Mega Greige helped the home’s architectural elements like railings, a belly band around the house, and small diamond accents stand out without providing too much contrast with the White Duck siding and painted brick.
It also coordinated really well with the lighter roof shingles the clients selected. We also used it on the garage doors (Article), which helped tie the whole color scheme together.
We also used a Mega Greige stain for the wood turret to highlight that feature without it feeling disconnected from the rest of the palette.
SW Urbane Bronze Front Door
We love picking front door paint colors for our clients. While we often pick a bold color that stands out against a home’s exterior, in this case we wanted to continue the low-contrast look.
Sherwin-Williams Urbane Bronze (Article) was the perfect front door color for this palette. It’s dark enough to pop but still softer than a true black-and-white color scheme.
SW Urbane Bronze (Sample) is an iconic warm, dark bronze color. Named the Sherwin-Williams 2021 Color of the Year, it’s truly unique, with an LRV of 8 and green undertones.
The updated exterior of this home not only looks more modern and cohesive, but it also reduced our client’s power costs. After painting the home in May — switching from a dark black-brown roof and red brick to a lighter roof and creamy exterior — the homeowners received a note from their electricity provider letting them know they’d used roughly 35–40% less power this summer than the last.
While we’ve never before seen hard data on exactly how much lighter colors help, we do hear it anecdotally all the time, and these clients felt the difference firsthand.
Sample This SW White Duck Exterior Palette
- Sherwin-Williams White Duck: Fascia, soffits, siding, and painted brick
- Sherwin-Williams Mega Greige: Window/door/garage door trim, garage doors, belly band, railings, shingle accent color, and gable diamonds
- Sherwin-Williams Urbane Bronze: Front door
Key Learning Points
A warm, creamy exterior palette is a beautiful way to get the crisp, classic look of a white house without the stark, high-contrast black-and-white look. When you start with the home’s fixed elements and build outward, even a tricky exterior can come together into something cohesive and timeless.
- You can choose your trim color to complement your roof — we picked Mega Greige specifically because it paired best with the home’s new, lighter shingles. We didn’t match the exact tone (dark/light), because we needed contrast. Otherwise it would have been a big blob of taupe.
- Painting brick isn’t always our first recommendation, but when it fights the rest of your palette, it can unify the whole exterior and give you a fresh, seamless look.
- Don’t overlook the small details, like a gable diamond. A subtle accent color in the right spot is what makes a palette feel intentional and complete.
Remember: NEVER, EVER use paint matches from a different brand than the one specified. Results are poor and there are no standards for the sheens. Even though your painter may truly believe it can be done, don’t do it. See results from paint matching here.
No matter what, always test your paint colors. It’s a standard best practice. Whenever I test my paint colors, they are perfect, and when I don’t test they turn out wrong. Learn how to test your paint colors here.
Online Color Consulting
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Related Posts:
- SW White Duck Exterior Spotlight
- SW Shoji White Color Review
- Best Exterior White Trim Paint Colors
- Parts of an Exterior to Paint
About the Author
Hi, I’m Michelle Marceny, founder, owner, and Principal Color Designer at The Color Concierge. I believe a fresh coat of paint can completely transform a space. The Color Concierge was born out of my drive to help clients fall back in love with their homes. My clients trust me to help them find the perfect paint color for their home – whether it’s a whole-house paint color scheme or ideas for a single room.
Since The Color Concierge was founded in 2017, we have completed over 3000 color consultations, both online and in-person. I am a Certified Color Expert with 7 years of experience creating interior and exterior color palettes throughout North America.
We love your comments! Please note that the blog is meant as general advice, and it is not possible to give out specific answers to your paint questions. If you want more specific advice, our Online Color Consultations will help you pick your paint colours. Thank you for your understanding.
