Decorating and Design - choosing exterior colors

I haven't a decorating bone in my body and I need help choosing an accent color. Ranch style house, multi-colored brown roof, white gutters and end rafters, white framed windows. The house has been painted a med. to dk beige. I am having trouble picking a color(s) for the shutters on the 3 front windows, door and the brick, about 4' high, below the frontroom window. And the corner boards at each end of the house. I have been toying with Antique White just because it goes with anything. I would like to even add another color, probably something dark, somewhere, but I don't know where. The houses in my neighborhood were all built in the early 60's. I just want to look towards the modern side. Hopefully someone can give me an idea or 2.

with the main body of the house being a medium beige, the roof brown, and the trim white, you've got a lot of choices! (which is probably the problem, huh?!) antique white would work and it would be a safe choice, but i don't think it would add much zip, especially being next to the white trim.

my first thought is burgundy. it would add color & it would contrast well against the beige and the white, plus it would seem "right" being on the brick.

my second choice would be a dark green (but not the brick). you might consider painting (or leaving) that brick the same beige color as the house, so as to not draw so much attention to it, since it was never meant to be painted in the first place and might look odd painted a color that brick would never naturally be (ie dark green).

another choice would be a brown (darker than the roof). by using brown, your main colors would all be very neutral, giving you the opportunity to paint your door in a much bolder accent color, such as the burgundy (not too dark, closer to red), which would really pop!

i would highly recommend you go to a hardware/paint store that offers a lot of those brochures showing different combinations of paints for houses. they are super helpful. and if you still can't picture it in your head, draw a very simple picture of your house & cut out the shutters, door & bricked area. then slip those paint chips behind your picture so you can really see what it will look like.

hope this helps!

Driving through neighborhoods in your area and making a survey of exterior color schemes can also be inspirational.

We have the same colors and I have Burgandy as the front door and shutter color.

If you do not like the Burgandy idea, what about a Teal? I have seen this recently on a few other homes and thought it looked nice.

I've seen lots of houses with dark navy shutters and door with the brown roof and medium beige house color. Seems to give a very inviting yet formal appearance which looks really nice.