Are you looking forward to repainting your midcentury ranch or contemporary home once the weather warms up? I recently connected with the nice folks at The Eichler Network, and saw that they have identified a palette of original exterior paint colors and accents used on Eichler homes, which were built from the late 1940s through the early 1970s.
The 11,000 homes that Joseph Eichler built in California have been very collectible, and The Eichler Network runs a website and magazine to connect Eichler homeowners with service providers specialized in helping them with sensitive updates. This paint color research is particularly helpful – because the Eichler experts also have translated them into Benjamin Moore (BM) colors easily available today.
Do you love Eichlers? Be sure to read my other posts about readers and their Eichlers:
- Troy rearranges his collections – in his new Eichler
- Mid-century modern landscaping
- A great bedroom design for an Eichler home
Eichler Network links:
- Eichler paint palette and other color stories
- All about Joseph Eichler
Just finished painting our post and beam 60’s rancher ‘black bean’ with ‘natural cream’ trim and an eye popping ‘pumpkin cream’ door. Totally fantastic! This site put to rest 3 years of colour searching.
YAY! send me a pick, Jill — would love to see the results. email me at retrorenovation [at] gmail [dot] com
Pam,
Our home is in Sunnyvale and soon it will be Aspen Green and Springfield Sage. Thanks for the posting of the Eichler colors.
I got lucky and bought one in a suburb. My neighbors quailed when they heard the price. Now, the housing prices are increasing.
If you want one, build one. You can put in all the energy conserving improvements (like well insulated walls in the bedrooms, double pane glass, and a really good foam roof), site it to pick up southern sun for the living room, and build in some kind of shading system for the atrium.
Eichler built for those days, when you cooled the house by opening all the doors to the atrium in the summer. And you burned lots of gas and ran the house cooler in the winter. And he usually built in areas with mild weather, mediterranean.
Because I am in one of the areas with colder winters and warmer summers than most…someday I’ll rebuild all the walls with structurally insulated panels and put a foam roof on the house. For now, I have a bedroom as a winter den, to be kept over seventy (warm enough for inactive pursuits like reading).
Do you know where to find the full color palette instead of the ‘partial list’?
At the time I wrote the story — my link took you right there. I am not sure where the Eichler Network website has now stashed it. I refer you to them…. Good luck!
Do we know what the DE means? Is it Dunn Edwards?
Eichlers are full of high ceilings and glass. However, they suffer from a serious problem : both the floors and the roofs are nearly impossible to modify, and moreover the houses had almost NO overhead lights or bathroom fans, and suffer greatly because of it. The roof is basically a wooden deck and to run new lights or ventilation you have to pierce the roof and run wiring or ductwork haphazardly across the roof before piercing it again. The floor is a concrete slab that by now is in a hundred pieces and is uneven and if your radient heating hasn’t failed yet it’s a miracle – it will fail soon. The mahogony panels bow greatly after many years of earthquakes and the laundry areas only fit traditional smaller washers and dryers. Most houses by now have the wood accents ruined because the owners painted them. As a result, the only thing I am hoping to keep original in our eichler is our joists. Seriously.
You’ve been misinformed about the longevity of the radiant heating in Eichlers. The original radiant heating system in our 1962 Eichler works perfectly, as do the water pipes (also embedded in the concrete slab). In the 23 years we’ve lived in this house, we’ve had two small pipe leaks, which were surprisingly easy to fix. We also replaced the old boiler with a new, energy-efficient one. Our gas bills are consistently reasonable, even in winter, and we enjoy the even heating, toasty warm floors, and best of all, no heating ducts or vents to worry about. Unless there’s a specific problem with the system in your house, I would urge you to leave your radiant heating system in place for at least one winter — you may find that you love it.
Can someone recommend a pretty trim color and shutter color to go with a red brick house?
Hi Virginia,
I realize this threat is a bit old but I was wondering how they fixed the small pipe leaks in your radiant floor system? Our has sprung a *hopefully* small leak and we really want to fix it if possible. Thanks!!