For the owners of jelly bean-colored homes, life is sweeter

It began with painting a bedroom wall red. Then came the yellow walls in the bathroom with a sunflower wallpaper border. And then the denim couch. Years later, Shannon Waters-Hwang’s affinity for color would manifest into a neon green three-story beach house with royal blue trim and outfitted with custom zebra-print furniture and (real) bubblegum-filled stair posts.

An emergency room doctor and mother of two, Waters-Hwang jokes that she’s never had a “grown-up style.” Rather, it’s the quirky that excites her, like a fake palm tree with feathers for leaves or drawer pulls shaped like lizards.

“I like the bright colors, like a kindergarten classroom ... What I see makes me smile,” said Waters-Hwang.

Her family’s vivid house in Seaside, Florida, stands out proudly among the rows of white homes. Where most Americans opt for the exterior color choices of Waters-Hwang’s neighbors (and many homeowners associations require it), she selects the opposite, gleefully.

The ruling color in home exteriors is off-white/cream, followed by white and light brown, according to a Harris Poll survey. Just 5% of respondents chose “other” for their exterior color.

But brightly colored homes are more prevalent than you think, at least in some locales.

It’s likely that when people stroll by Waters-Hwang’s home — or any rainbow-colored residence — they wonder, “Who lives in that house, and why would they paint it that color?”

There’s a commonality among that 5% of “other” homeowners who commit to vibrant rainbow hues seen more often in a bag of jelly beans than a row of homes: An exceeding amount of joy sparked by color and little care for outside opinions.

Embracing color and moving on from white is a conversation happening now in the home design world. Surveys suggest that designers and homeowners enjoy more color today than in years past, resulting in brands releasing new hues of high-priced fixtures like matte red refrigerators, green washing machines, and black toilets to meet those demands. And more designers note receiving requests for printed wallpaper and color-filled interiors.

Some attribute the change to Americans’ perception of their homes during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: They became havens and escapes. People stared at their homes all day and picked at their inefficiencies and downfalls — as values jumped and demand spiked by 3% interest rates turned those properties into the hottest must-haves.

But for those who go in on candy-colored homes, painting their siding against the status quo, it’s less trend-fueled and more in their nature.

Vonda Henry became a certified public accountant because at 16, her boyfriend, a hopeful CPA himself, told her it wasn’t a career for women.

“I became a CPA and he did not,” Henry said.

Henry tax plans for businesses, but at the end of the day, she returns to a blue home with orange trim and a yellow soffit. Her previous home, which she has on the market, is a vibrant violet with mint green accents she purchased and painted in 1999. She saw the color combination in a magazine and took it to the paint store, where they happened to give her the wrong shade of purple, but she was OK with that. Inside the Atlanta home, a soft blue covered the walls of her living room, green hugged her bedroom, and purple drenched the bathroom.

Buyers usually go toward turnkey homes requiring little work, which isn’t usually the case for vibrant homes. Henry and her agent neutralized the interior to sell the home more easily, but she would never touch that purple paint on the outside.

A friend once called it a “Barney” purple, referring to the friendly singing magenta dinosaur with an eponymous children’s show — Henry couldn’t care less.

“It’s my house. I was paying for it, and I wasn’t asking for any money. I can do whatever the hell I want to do,” she said. “I would never buy or live in a white or beige home.”

Many homeowners, unlike Henry and Waters-Hwang, maintain a “resale value” mindset when selecting exterior colors, or even a “blend in” mentality. But in some parts of the country, using color is blending in.

In the Bahama Village area of Key West, Florida, Gabriel and Kim Wright wanted to pay tribute to the area’s roots. They researched traditional Bahamian colors and painted the home as one of the first steps of the remodel when they purchased it in 2018 (it's on the market). Gabriel enjoyed teals; Kim liked warm colors and pink (hence the pink door). It’s not a requirement for homes in the neighborhood to be bright — just a few are, the Wrights said — but it remains true to the area.

“The house is very old, too, so we like houses with character. We like age, a distinct character, and a vibe. We’re both artists, and we just like to be original and different, I guess,” said Gabriel, a musician originally from Ohio. Kim is a designer and former Disney character artist from Luxembourg.

The two admit they “went nuts” inside with color, basing the palettes of green, red, orange, and yellow off a painting of a gambling pirate. During the pandemic, the home became a source of joy for the community, too. Gabriel played music on the porch while Kim live-streamed it on their YouTube channel.

Homes in other coastal towns in the Carolinas, Florida, and Texas often come in shades of pink, orange, yellow, blue, and green. A lot of it is due to homeowners association requirements, noted Florida agent Gayle Adams of Scenic Sotheby’s International Realty, who sells in the Florida Panhandle. The Wrights were able to select any paint color because Bahama Village had no restrictions.

“What draws people to the area is that we don’t look like Dallas, Texas,” she said. “We don’t have brown brick and brown shingles.”

The homes in the Alys Beach part of 30A — a section of the Florida Panhandle — must be white, while in the nearby Seaside, Florida, only civic buildings can be pure white. Many of the homes fall into a pastel palette.

The colors in coastal towns represent the lifestyle that those buyers, often snowbirds or retirees, want: whimsical, fun, and relaxed. Homes that express that visually usually win their attention.

“They definitely don't prefer white and beige in general across 30A from our perspective,” said agent Richard Jabbour with Scenic Sotheby’s International Realty. “Buyers here want to experience some joy in their lives, and this is a place that brings them joy, and so they make these decisions, not necessarily purely financially. They're not unaware, but they're primarily making a decision to create family memories and experiences.”

Wendi Renee of Knoxville, Tennessee, finds great cheer in her home with its two-toned blue exterior, pink front door, and lavender garden fence. It sticks out, yet the neighbors embrace it. People say she has a “happy house,” and her agent, Angie Tierney, said that's the vibe when you’re inside, too.

“I’m telling you, you walk into the house, you think it’s cute, but when you go there, you don’t want to leave,” said Tierney, who agrees that Renee’s home is just as joyful as she is. “You feel happy, you feel like you’re on vacation, you want to have a girls’ night there, you think of all these ways you want to experience that place and live there. She is very gracious, always offering tea or homemade candy. You don’t want to leave her. You love her instantly.”

It’s something the entire neighborhood feels. Renee is selling her home, much to the dismay of her neighbors, she said.

Henry’s colorful home had a ripple effect on her community as well. She has noticed more colorful homes popping up in the neighborhood and increasingly receives compliments on her white rosebushes, which are stunning juxtaposed against the home’s color — a look that has passersby constantly stopping to look.

There’s scientific backing to the idea that color evokes emotions like relaxation, energy and cheerfulness. According to consultant and author Michelle Lewis of The Color Cure, it’s about how eyes react to the frequency of light. Blue has a shorter light wavelength, reduces the heart rate and is most associated with trust. Yellow, closer to the middle of the visible light spectrum, is equated with sunlight. Purple, the shortest wavelength, boosts creativity.

But like home design and color preferences, how one reacts physically to colors comes down to individuals and their needs. Red creates the greatest physical response, said Lewis, which could overwhelm some, while others might want that feeling and place it in a bedroom to stir up creativity.

“If there's not a lot of color, or if there's not something bright, or there's not something vivid that I can see when I walk into a room, I want to fill it with that,” Waters-Hwang said. “It just makes me feel a little more settled.”

The focus on fun in Waters-Hwang’s home also comes from her desire for people to feel relaxed, put their feet up, and feel welcomed.

The joy Renee experiences could come from her selection of pastels or from the mere act of personalizing her home. It’s one of seven remodels she’s done since taking up house flipping in retirement. Each one has a Key Largo, Florida-inspired design.

She couldn’t move to Key Largo to retire and fill her days diving into the ocean, so she brings it into every home. Renee lives in each for a couple of years and then moves on to the next. Once she sells her current home, Renee hopes to achieve her dream of an all-pink paradise.

Each home tells her story, and she’s been writing this one for the past five years. The backyard fence features an orca whale, sea turtle, and tropical fish, representing real diving experiences, like a trip to Mexico, where she helped dig up 56 baby sea turtles to bring to the ocean.

“I started flipping because I love to decorate and I love to play,” said Renee. “And it just seemed positive. And I always say when I sell a house that paint is just the color, so you can go buy whatever color you want.”