Being bold in the suburbs?

[Snowguy716]

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/681847.html

I've seen the development mentioned in the article, it's visible from the freeway when you drive through Albertville. I thought it looked quite nice, almost like those houses you see in Norway that are so colorful. There are barn red, blues, greens...

It's still suburbia, but at least they kicked some of the drabness.

[runawayjim]

interesting idea... too bad the article doesn't have pictures.

i honestly don't know how people can stand living in drab neighborhoods with nothing but beige houses. i told my fiancee that when we move, we are not buying a beige house, either that or we paint it immediately.

[Snowguy716]

This is the only decent picture I could find.

Here is an example of one particular home:

http://www.thedesignteam.biz/images/galler...earea/mega1.jpg

URL here

[SouthParkRocks]

You call that Neon Blue?!

Folks don't seem to be much afraid of color in my streetcar suburb.

[runawayjim]

there's a house in clinton, CT that i think someone runs a veterinarian's office out of. she had some problem with the town about something stupid. so to get back at them, she painted each side of it a different bold color. there's purple, orange, yellow, green, and red that i've seen. there might be others in the back. the house is located near the center of clinton, so it's a heavily travelled area. it's kind of neat to see. i haven't been there in a while, so it might be different now.

[Nitro]

You call that Neon Blue?!

Folks don't seem to be much afraid of color in my streetcar suburb.

I was going to say the same thing. We've got subdivisions upon subdivisions of houses with colors like that.

I like that craftsman. I just did one like it with almost the same color scheme. We originally had a green that dark but we all felt it was a little too close to Lincoln Log green. We opted for something a bit lighter.

[Snowguy716]

The article deals with houses that are less than 50 years old. The houses pictured above have all been built since 2001.

There's a difference between inner-ring grid suburbs and the cul-de-sac beige 'burbs.

[wolverine]

I'm sure we'd see more of these if our suburbs' character wasn't controlled so much by developers. Nowadays houses are built by the 100's in large isolated subdivisions with spaghetti noodle streets everywhere. If communities stuck to gridiron street plans and narrow parcels, you'd sse a lot more of this.

I really believe that many people want to live in the sort of traditional home like you see above. But they aren't given a lot of options when it comes to building a new home because a very small handfull of builders/developers are putting these types of homes up.

[peaceloveunderstanding]

^ There are several new subdivisions with colorful, old-style housing in the exurbs of Charlotte that sell out very quickly, and don't go back on the market quickly. They sell well at $300k-$600k. Most have the garages in the back, on an alley, big porches on the front, and the feel is quite different from most subdivisions. I don't know if there is more community in these neighborhoods than the typical subdivision. Anways, It seems to be a new trend.

The problem is not the developers. It's the government and zoning. Developers build what people want or their product doesn't sell. The government often doesn't let the developers build interesting projects.

A few of the houses in one of those subdivisions I was talking about:

http://www.helenadamsrealty.com/search/det...l?MlsNum=614987 - Yellow house with double decker porch

http://www.helenadamsrealty.com/search/det...l?MlsNum=610031 - Bright Blue house with very red trim.

http://www.helenadamsrealty.com/search/det...l?MlsNum=610011 - Light blue house

http://www.helenadamsrealty.com/search/det...l?MlsNum=559039

http://www.helenadamsrealty.com/search/det...l?MlsNum=609423 - Dark green house\

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Here are listings for another subdivision of these type of homes.

[Cadeho]

Who decided on beige anyway?

[Nemean]

Who decided on beige anyway?

[FromCityToRural]

Hey, our little tract house was pink...I'm actually more surprised by the fact that more people DON'T do something like this.

[Chazarelli]

There are a few communities going up in Lee's Summit, MO (Kansas City) that are using that style of housing. In the cases I have seen they are actually developing a community with those houses that includes a school, market, buisness area, parks area.

The historic Longview Mansion/Park/Stables are being developed now.

http://www.newlongview.com/

[dpbaker]

Each to their own. I prefer more subtle, earth-tones and grays.

[dgreco]

^I agree, I love the earth tone houses, the neon's are ugly, but a nice mellow dark or light earthy house is great it adds a lot of character and looks better than just white or cream with colored shutters.