External Colour Selections

Well as most of you know, when building at The Ponds you have to follow "the design guidelines" that govern your choice of brick, facade and colour choices.

A few points we had to adhere to were:

• have an interesting looking house by having articulation such as STEPPING walls (so no straight walls like a box)
• walls over 14m must have a break
• you must have eaves (min 450mm) Very happy to have them anyway
• no fancy ornamentation or fake historical details
• at least two different materials on the facade eg: brick, stone, tiles, render, paint, cladding etc
• no colourbond fencing.
• points of interest- stepped walls, balconies, varied finishes and projected walls
• bricks to be not deeply textured, generally uniform and not white or pale coloured!
• base colours and highlights should be subdued
• roofs are preferrably of a darker colour
• driveways should be charcoal or natural earth tones
• letterbox of solid construction eg brick- no box on a stick allowed

There is also the offer of a $5,000 rebate if you follow the landscaping guidelines. Such things in that are:

• 4 x 6m of POS (private open space)
• front yard has min 2 small trees (4-6m)
• rear yard 1 large tree (6-10m high)
• low fence or hedge across front boundary
• garden bed beside driveway and neighbours yard
• turf all yard
• most planting is native species
• no turf down the side of the house if it is narrow(can be pebbles, pavers, steppers,decking)

So there are some restrictions which were pretty easy to incorporate...they actually reduced choices which in turn helped us a lot. The more choice it seems, the more decision making to do!


This is the roof tile, brick and portico combo.

So for the bricks as said before, we chose Earth from the Symmetry range with an off-white raked mortar.

The roof tiles are Monier Traditional profile (flattish) in the colour Baramundi (which is a dark grey)

The windows, facia, gutter and down pipes will be Woodland Grey.

The external cladding at the back of the house on the top storey, plus the eaves will be Moonglow.(which is a very pale cream/white.



Here is a dodgey photo of our colour selections. Only time will tell, but from looking at other houses in the area we think we are onto a winner!

The Garage door will be a slimline door in Classic Cedar and our front door will also be stained to match.

Then finally our front portico will be similar to Alligator Alley Green from Dulux.The best part is that this can be changed whenever we feel the need (with a tin of paint). Mum has been very forceful in wanting something that stands out a bit!!. The house colours are all safe and muted so Mum is arguing that the splash of green will look great, especially with the plants selected for the front yard tying it in as well. There will be a beautiful Tibouchina allstonville in the front yard (Lassiandra to you old folk haha) so the purple flowers will set the green off! (So she says)

The Ponds design panel were not too fussed on the green either....much to Dad and D2's delight. But Mum and D1 are sticking with it as they think it is an added feature! Only time will tell! It is only about 1/8 of the front facade when talking proportion of colour so Dad says he will take the risk for the sake of an arguement. Good decision Dad!.

This is an indication of colour on our chosen facade. Obviously bricks are darker, roof is darker and the garage and front door match in Classic cedar as swatches. Too out there???