Color for Production Housing

Tobi Saunders, owner of 1837 Color & Design, is a trained Architect and Color Consultant. At her company she specifies exterior color and materials for production builders around the county. These builders create large developments of single family and sometimes multi-family residences throughout the US with the predominance of construction happening in the Southern states where population shifts continue to aggregate. Keeping regionality, budget and variety at the forefront of her mind, Tobi uses principles of color theory, wielding her colorful wand to improve the look and feel of new communities in the making.

Production Housing design by Tobi Saunders

Amy:

Color is the foundation of great design. It can settle a building into its landscape. It can make an unattractive structural detail just disappear and it can change your mood in a room instantly. Welcome to Let's Talk Color. I'm Amy Crane, architectural color consultant at Amy Crane Color. I'm a color expert and use color to transform spaces and products from the ordinary to the sublime. As a paint color specialist, realtor and design writer, I've got my finger on the pulse of what's happening in the world of color. In each episode, I'll reveal best practices for choosing color by introducing you to Masters of Color for the Built world. So throw out those paint chips taped to your walls, and let's get started.

I rarely interview other US based color consultants because of the obvious overlap, but in this instance, my guest's predominant work experience differs from mine somewhat. So I thought this would be interesting. I find conversations about adding color to our shared public environments really thought provoking and important.

Toby Saunders is an architectural design professional and color strategist. She holds a master of architecture from the University of Florida and has worked in the architecture industry for over 20 years. She studied the psychology of color at the International Association of Color Consultants, as I did, and was greatly influenced by the color studies of influential artists, Joseph Albers. She's combined her knowledge of architectural style and color theory to work with single and multifamily builders across the country, developing color palettes for new communities. She's the owner of 1837 Color and Design. Welcome, Toby.

Toby:

Hi, thanks.

Amy:

Sure. So your earliest jobs were on staff at individual builders?

Toby:

No, I've actually only ever worked for architectural firms who work for builders. So I've worked in both commercial and residential firms, and probably the last 10 years or so I've worked for firms that specialize in production building.

Amy:

Got it. And so when you worked for those firms previously, were you working in the capacity of an architect or as a color consultant?

Toby:

Both.

Amy:

Okay. Yeah. And do you do architecture work now? Do you actually design buildings?

Toby:

I don't right now I focus mainly on color at the moment. It's fluid. I could go back at any time, but this is what I enjoy right now. Yeah.

Amy:

Great. In case our listeners don't actually know what production builders are, can you explain what they are and how they work?

Toby:

So in simple terms, production builders develop residential communities, whether that's built for sale or what's becoming popular now is built for rent. Sometimes there's only one builder in the community. Other times there's these large developments that have multiple builders. There's a lot of those. In Florida particularly and in Texas where building has been booming the past several years, the builder will typically develop multiple floor plans and develop a few elevation styles for each plan, maybe anywhere from three to five elevation styles, just depending on the size of the community and the budget. So they build the same plan basically over and over again, which makes it economical. And then changing the front facade creates diversity, and we add more diversity to that by providing multiple color palettes for each style.

Amy:

Got it. Would you say that developing color plans and facade styles for communities that are predominantly for rent is different in terms of what they ask you for and what they want you to accomplish than for sale?

Toby:

Not really. I mean, they're still trying to make it look like a neighborhood. They don't, for the most part, they don't want it to be a cookie cutter community that you drive in and see the exact same house and color over and over again. So I haven't found a lot of difference in that sense now architecturally and as far as finishes go, there are differences, but for color, I don't think there's a lot of difference either way.

Amy:

Got it. Is most of your work actually in Florida and Texas because of the building, boom there?

Toby:

It is. And the Carolinas now as well. They're doing well. Yeah. So I'm actually trying to expand West. I'm from Florida, but I've lived out here for a couple years now in southern California. So I'm trying to expand my business west.

Amy:

Gotcha. What's the biggest challenge in being a company that's only two years old? I mean, I would think, tell me if I'm wrong, it’s actually getting accounts and getting work. How have you approached that coming from the background you had?

Toby:

Well, I already had relationships with builders, just working with them through my architecture firms, and I was the only colorist on staff. So conveniently for me I still offer this service. I just offer it on my own. So there is the challenge of getting new work from new clients that I haven't worked with before, but I do have working relationships with previous clients and I’m not stepping on any toes either. So I have a good relationship with my former employers and colleagues and they refer work to me.

Amy:

Fantastic. And over the years that you were in fact on staff at these architectural companies, have you seen the existence of color consultants growing? I mean, personally, I do some commercial and mostly residences and individual homeowners. And from when I started, which isn't a tremendously long time ago, I started in 2012, there are so many people out there calling themselves color consultants, trying to make a living as a color consultant, whether they really have the training or don't. As we both probably know the training is not standard and it really ranges from some classes you took when you were studying architecture, like for you, but I think the majority of people who are out there selling themselves as a color consultant are not architects. And they come from very different walks of life, which is terrific, but there is not standard education for this. So are you finding there is more competition now and more companies do have someone on staff to do color?

Toby:

Well, I find that companies don't necessarily keep a colorist on staff because it is such a niche, sort of a niche task, and paying someone full-time to be on staff and that's their only job is not economical for them. Also, because I have a background in architecture and design, and I think it gives me more credibility than somebody who just says, oh, I'm a color designer. A lot of people call themselves interior decorators because they can't technically call themselves interior designers, but have no formal

Amy:

Training.

Toby:

Right. So I haven't found a lot of competition in that regard. Now there are other architecture firms who do have colorists on staff that may be working with a builder, but as far as outside colorists, I haven't really run into that.

Amy:

Gotcha. When you're working with production builders walk us through the process from the beginning of your involvement to the end. So you just mentioned before there might be a few different elevations, a few different layouts. They're going to come to you and ask you what ? They're going to tell you what about the materials that you can use, and then you give them what?

Toby:

Obviously the first place to start is what region are you in? So I can start thinking about what that mood is going to be. I need to know what their elevation styles are. I'd love to see the elevations if those are developed already because that's very helpful. I want to know the materials that they're using, the manufacturers they're using, do they have a vision? Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't really, so when I start the process, I gather all of their manufacturer materials. Typically it's paint, but it's also brick and stone and window colors, pre colored garage doors, shutters.

Amy:

And you're talking about actual samples that you get?

Toby:

Some Yes. Essentially, yes. Brick and stone comes on a color board that's usually 18 by 18 inches, pretty mobile, but I can take those. I take it outside. I take my paint samples outside and lay it all out.

So I start with ordering all of the samples that I may or may not have. Hopefully I have a lot of 'em. Then I ask them how many homes they're actually building in that community because I need to know how many color palettes are you going to need, how many craftsman styles are you building? How many French country styles are you building? Typically, I will develop between three and five color palettes per style, just depending on the size of the development and the budget. Sometimes there's much more than that. It just depends if it's a really large community. So I start there and I start laying out collections of color palettes. So I have to think of it in terms of collections and how those collections work together and really envision how the streetscape will work as I'm developing those colors.

Amy:

Got it. How much feedback or influence ,interference, guidance, anything, do you get from the stakeholders that you are working with? The people who hire you?

Toby:

It depends on the client. Some clients are, these look great, let's move forward. Others, when you start getting into it, sometimes there's a panel of people who want to see and want to give their input, and sometimes I agree with their input and sometimes I try to steer them in a different direction.

Amy:

Always some politics involved. Right.

You have to be able to work with people. What are the deliverables you give them? What are you actually showing them when you are saying this is what the facade looks like?

Toby:

So I provide a color board. It's typically a digital color board that has the paint samples, bricks, stone, their window colors, roof colors, all of the exterior elements put together on a display board to show them how those colors are going to work together. Like I said, usually that's digital. Sometimes they want actual physical color boards.

Amy:

Which means you put it together and ship it to them because you're not in the same place.

Toby:

Correct.

Amy:

Okay.

Amy:

So you would create a board. You would take Masonite or something structural, and if there was brick or stone or cultured stone or Hardie board or anything, you'd put it together?

Toby:

So not the brick and stone, because that is very heavy. I will use manufacturer's photography for that, which is usually pretty accurate. And oftentimes they have samples where they are too. But I will use paint samples, Hardie Board, vinyl, whatever it is they're using so they can really see the color.

Amy:

Got it.

Toby:

But that's not typical, not in the development process anyway. Sometimes they want color boards at the end for their design studio so that buyers can come in and see, touch and feel. But typically we are using digital color boards now. So I do that and then I also provide them with a matrix, a spreadsheet that has each material and what color, what manufacturer, so that it makes their ordering easier. And then I do a color diagram on their elevation, sort of a paint by numbers with highlighter colors. So it's really easy to look at it and see, okay, yellow needs trim, and that's the trim color we're going to use, which is really great for painters in the field. So it makes their job easier.

Amy:

And the tools that you use, are you doing a lot of Photoshop or not needed for what you're doing?

Toby:

I do use Photoshop and InDesign quite a bit.

Amy:

Got it.

Toby:

Especially for Photoshop. For color elevations, I also do renderings for them in Photoshop that have sort of a watercolor look if that's something they want for their marketing materials or their website. So I use that. And then InDesign, I can create color boards on it pretty easily.

Amy:

Got it. Do these production builders ever offer an added level of customization for certain clients who are buying these houses? And if so, are you ever back in the process after you've done the layout for the whole community or once it's done.

Toby:

So it's not typical for a production builder to offer customization because it's not economical for them. Sometimes the separate HOA that's formed at that community will allow changes away from the builder on their own. And I have served as a consultant for HOAs and reviewing color choices that their home buyers or homeowners at that point want to make. But it's not typical. Normally if I'm just working with a builder, we're done. They're done. We both move on and onto the next project.

Amy:

So what would you say your typical length of interaction is with one of these production builders? From the point they say, “Hey, Toby, we'd like you involved. Here's where it's going to be. Here are the five house layouts. We want three designs each from start to here you go, we're done. What's that time span?”

Toby:

I mean, in an ideal world with no bumps, maybe two to four weeks. It's pretty fast.

Amy:

It sounds fast.

Toby:

Yeah. There are builders that take months also. So sometimes they come back and say, you know what? We need to add brick to this elevation. The HOA is requiring us to add more brick, or they want stone instead of brick now. So we'll make those changes along the way as well. But in a typical easy peasy project, in and out, they tell me what they want. I develop the palettes, I send them on their way with all of their color elevations and everything, and we're done. Yeah.

Amy:

Given a lot of this work has been with production builders, talk to me a little bit about multi-family buildings. So have you worked on multifamily projects, apartment buildings, condos, whole complexes of single buildings, new builds, renovation when the buildings get taller and become that kind of community? Have you experienced doing that?

Toby:

Most of my multi-family housing is townhouse style housing. So anywhere from a duplex to maybe a six or eight plex building. And it's a community of buildings. So when I do that, we have to discuss what are you looking for, what's your vision for the community? Do you want all each building to be the same one color palette for each building, or do we want to do a row house type color scheme? And then once we develop all the color palettes, then I'll actually map them out on the site to make sure that we're not using the same color palette either next door or right across from each other that we make sure that there's not a lot of monotony going on.

Amy:

Got it. And so you do that by looking at a site plan, an overhead site plan, and saying, okay, the green house is here, the blue house is here, it's looking at the yellow house.

Toby:

I actually open it up in Photoshop, and I start placing small thumbnails of my color palettes on each building to see visually I can see what's happening.

Amy:

You're creating colors for whole communities, be it multi-family or single family homes, but in community, do you think that you rely more on value, saturation or hue to create the difference between the looks of the façade? Do you tend towards a certain kind of design that you're more likely to rely on using these three different attributes of color?

Toby:

First of all, I have to separate my personal taste from what I do. But I like to make sure if you look a little cross-eyed at the palettes as they're laid out, that you see variety. So you see greens, blues, reds, whether, I mean, obviously not

Amy:

Cherry red,

Toby:

Right? Maybe it's a door or it's a shutter color. There's a wide range of color that is there. So I would say it's all of those things, hue in particular, because I think that we have got to incorporate more than just gray and beige. So yeah. When you squint your eyes, do you see variety? You want to see variety, but you don't want to see one particular, one really popping out at you because can you imagine driving down the street and suddenly there's a bright red house amongst the moody, earthy towns of the other houses?

Amy:

Right. What about, I find just looking at building across the country, be it single family homes or multifamily, that it's a whole bunch of years now that there's been such a prevalence of buildings being black and white or being almost black and white, charcoal gray and white. There's such an reliance it seems, on these high contrast color combinations regardless of where in the nation they are. And it just seems  for me, it's too much of a reliance. What's your feeling about that?

Toby:

I mean, I don't hate high contrast. I think I agree that it's overused. You're going to know that house was built in the early 2020s, just like in the nineties when you drove through a neighborhood and everything was beige, and you know we called it Builder Beige, and now we have builder white. I think that you can still use high contrast colors, but maybe it's not the modern farmhouse White House black trim that is so popular. Maybe it's a second body color that accentuates a gable or an entryway or trying to think of more creative ways to use contrast than just paint color and trim. I do think it's dated though. I think there's an expiration date on it.

Amy:

Right. Are you finding that even for your clients who are predominantly in the South, that they are still embracing some use of black, even if it's not a whole black façade? I am.

Toby:

Yes. Because, well, obviously you cannot paint the entire house black because of heat gain in the South. But you can paint a boxed out window, you can paint that siding black, and it's small and it's impactful, but it's not really contributing to heat gain.

Amy:

And what about the idea of color blocking? The effect of creating patterns on facades where maybe the materials are being switched up? Maybe you're going from a Board and Batten area to a lap siding area, and there's a little bit of an architectural reason, or maybe there's not, and color blocks are created just for visual interest where there's no architectural justification for it. Have you seen that and what do you think about that?

Toby:

I think it's a great way to add animation to the facade. While keeping a tighter budget, they may not be able to change materials and architecturally change the facade, but you can create a lot of change with color. So again, maybe it's the gable or it's just right around the entryway. We use something, even if it's a darker tone of the same color, something to draw the eye to it.

You create depth. And even on a flat surface, you can create the illusion of a change of plane without having to box it out and add to the expense of the building.

Amy:

Absolutely. I had a client last year, she was a university professor, and was pretty close to retirement and she was building a house that was going to be her last house. She had it priced out pre COVID, and then they were breaking ground post COVID. And the change in the building costs, both labor and materials were so impactful that she had to make so many compromises that she never planned on. So when we started, we were using LP siding and I was trying to get her to to pick some small section of it and have panels there. So we could do a little, if not board and batten just panels and a different look and switch up the color and all. It was modern, it was kind of tiny, but modern kind of boxy.

And as it turned out, it was so much more money to do the panels than the lap siding. It flabbergasted me that all we could do was use color. Exactly like you said, we created depth, an area looking like it recessed when it wasn't or comes forward when it didn't. And adding shades and all of that stuff just to give it more architectural interest using color. So I mean, costs are incredible now. I'm working with a client right now in Rhinebeck, which is a Hudson Valley town here, a beautiful home in the village of Rhinebeck. And it's a 1920s brick house that they're doing extensive renovation, expanding, upgrading, and all of that. And I can't tell you the square footage of the kitchen. I don't know it, but it's kind of a normal size kitchen with let's say two long rows of cabinets and therefore counters and backsplashes are also stone. So stone on the counters, real stone, not quartz, stone on the backsplash. And then in the primary bathroom, they wanted two shower walls to be stone slabs also. That was marble. And I just saw them yesterday. We were doing paint color for various things, and he said that the cost of the stone in the two areas was flabbergasting. And I said, I have to ask, will you tell me? And he said, yeah, $70,000.

Toby:

Oh, wow.

Amy:

Yeah.

Toby:

Wow.

Amy:

So are there any kind of projects that you haven't worked on yet?

Toby:

Yeah, I've worked on mainly smaller scale residential and commercial projects. I've done some commercial and retail and medical buildings. I would really like to work on a high rise, particularly a condo type high rise that combines both residential and commercial. It's a different scale and you don't have to think about unit to unit. We can think large color blocking on a large building.

Amy:

Do you want to talk about any of your projects that you've done so far that have really stood out for you in terms of anything it's problem solving, complexity, level of satisfaction, uniqueness, anything that stands out in your mind?

Toby:

Well, I did have a project in South Florida. My client was one of several builders in the development. They had, gosh, I think they had 10 floor plans and seven elevations each. And we did five or six color palettes for each elevation style. And we also had to render all of the elevations. So in addition to picking the color palettes, I was also maintaining the matrix so that we knew what color palettes we were using, and we made sure to use each one at least once. And then I also joined the team that was rendering those elevations. So really cool project. Yeah, a lot of work. Very complicated, but great. Yeah.

Amy:

Had you done color renderings before?

Toby:

I had a little.

Amy:

Gotcha.

Toby:

But it really fast forwarded that skill for me.

Amy:

Right, right. And that's something, I mean, Photoshop isn't 3D, so you would've done that on InDesign?

Toby:

No, I did it in Photoshop. It's not three dimensional, but elevations, it's just the two dimensional elevations. So you add shadow and light and create the illusion that it is more of a three-dimensional watercolor sort of rendering.

Amy:

Gotcha. What made you decide to create your elevations with this watercolor look? You just find it painterly. Yeah.

Toby:

It's what the client was looking for and it's a great look.

Amy:

Do you also do work in California or is that kind of building not happening?

Toby:

It's happening a little less. So in the area that I'm in currently, I'm actually planning to move a little further south, so there's a bit more building going on down there. But I'm in the Los Angeles area, so there is not really production building that happens in Los Angeles.

Amy:

Gotcha. What kind of regional differences do you see in the requests from the builders, even given comparing a southern location to a southern location, for instance, a Florida to a Texas, things that you think you can attribute to region as opposed to just individual companies and people who are hiring you?

Toby:

Florida and Texas are a great example because Texas loves their Texas stone and it's mined there. It's very economical for them, it's plentiful and that's why they use it. And a lot of it has a lot of yellows and oranges in it. And they use a lot of, they like cedar, they like cedarwood and their Texas stone and the colors really, it's can be a challenge to work with so much orange and yellow. Whereas, there's really nothing that's native to Florida anymore. So it's cultured stone, it's brick. The world is your oyster, but Texas is a little more limited in what you can do.

Amy:

Do you find that when it does come down to using paint, if it isn't Hardie or vinyl or something like that, do you find that most of the builders are using one paint company as opposed to the others?

Toby:

A lot of them do, but there are instances where they'll use a different company and I need to know that upfront because as you know, the base they use, the mineral base they use for their colors is different from company to company. And so even though you can come close to matching it, it's really not a color match. So I had a builder in Florida who after we chose all the color palettes, their paint contractor went with a cheaper paint and they color matched each individual color, but they did not look at it as a pair as two or three colors that work together. Undertones were off. They painted a couple of houses. And when I tell you I was horrified, horrified, well, I was like, okay, this is the color. If this is what you're doing, let me redo your colors because I don't want this to get built like this. So we did, we just went back and redid the colors based on the new brand they were using and got them to at least to repaint some of the elements on the already painted houses that worked better than, I mean it turned out well in the end, but it was a scary moment. At first. I was like, did I do this? No.

Amy:

Yeah, yeah. It's just incredible. The painters, the painters are so quick to say, yeah, use any company you want. And then they go and use who they want. Here where I am, I mean more of my work is virtual than on-site at this point, but still, I'm in the Hudson Valley, I'm right next to New England. And I would say slightly more homeowners choose Benjamin Moore and way more painters want Sherman Williams. So I had a situation where I had this lovely couple who were renovating a country house in the Berkshires in Great Barrington. And we did colors for interior, a whole interior. And I said to them, what are you using? Make sure and not just the name of the company, you want to hear the line of paint, because I'll tell you, there are contractor grade paints and their goal is cheap and fast and there's retail paint and their goal is coverage and durability, and that costs more.

And you can't just say Benjamin Moore. Your quote needs to say, what line of paint? Okay, fine. So we spent a lot of time on picking these colors, which we settled on. And one day I get a call from a woman and she says, hi, my name is so-and-so, one of the local reps for Sherwin Williams. I know you're working on a project with us and I just want to know if I could help you. Do you need any designer tools? And I have every single fan book and fan deck and loose leaf and everything I need from Sherwin, thanks so much, but I'm not doing a job in the Berkshires. What are you talking about? And she was like, oh, oh, I must have made a mistake - all this backpedaling. And I got off the phone and I emailed my clients and I said, “listen, I think your painter might be doing a swap out Benjamin Moore to Sherwin- Williams.

And there's no problem with Sherman's paint. It's excellent paint, but I do not condone color matching one company's to another. Look I took so much time. We went and looked at the paint in the rainy days and then we came back on the sunny days and all of this, and now it's being matched. And so they were really upset. They got in touch with the builder. The builder subbed out to a painter. So he got in touch with the painter and they said, oh yeah, yeah, Sherwin Williams all the time. I don't even need to mention the Sherwin-Williams because we match Benjamin Moore all the time. And I said, have them paint the tests, paint the tests, and let's go see it. And we walked into, when we came into the house, the Benjamin Moore swatches were up on the wall next to a painted patch of the Sherwin match and not one color matched. Not one. And they said, sorry, you bid Benjamin Moore, you're going to have to use Benjamin Moore. But the painters are very flippant about matching because they don't care. They don't have the eye, the nuance. It is not apparent to them or important to them.

Toby:

Right. It's the mechanics of painting for them. It's not the artistry of painting for them. So they don't get, I don't think they're trying to cause any harm. I think they just don't get it. So you definitely have to educate your client and make sure your client is, understands what their painter's going to do for them.

Amy:

Well, listen, this has been really fun talking about your work and your projects. I wish you a lot of luck. I mean, it's always exciting to go out and start your own thing and be your own boss. And I'm glad that you're enjoying it, and I wish you lots of luck and I'll see you out in the field.

Toby:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.