Another colour decision that we needed to make on the new house is the rest of the exterior colours - I said yesterday that we went with black and white, but I didn't explain where. I personally found the colour selection process a little confusing - the Bay West people use these strange terms like "soffit" and "fascia". If you're in the home building market, these are common terms, but to a computer geek like me, these terms are totally foreign. After Ashley patiently explained it to me for the fifth time, I decided to make this graphic for those of you who are a little confused about it too.



On this house, both the soffit and fascia are the same colour, but in many houses they're not. On our house, we went with black fascia and white soffit. I think this will look classy.

One major disappointment for me in this process was the fact that Bay West Homes didn't have any sort of computerized way for us to view the colours on this model of house. There are so many parts of the house, that even now I'm not clear on what exactly the house will look like with all the various exterior sections. It's not like a paint-by-numbers computer program would be hard to do - but the sales reps at Bay West Tuscany (Shelly and Kimerie) tell me that Bay West Homes is the most un-technologically advanced builder in Calgary. Seems like an odd match for someone like me. :)

I also found it odd that they didn't have any pre-done colour selections. For the colour-challenged among us (I'm only half in this category), it would make a lot of sense to have some pre-done colour selections put together by a skilled designer. Giving people a head start would be far more helpful than handing them a swack of colour swatches and saying "Go for it!". Sure, everyone has different tastes, but most homes out there aren't that radically different in terms of colour. Why not give home builders a choice of six colour templates?