Fresh color brings new life to exterior of 1903 Akron home | Holly Christensen

Nothing can change how a space makes people feel more easily than color. Industrial-organizational psychologists research how color affects mood in institutions from prisons to hospitals to schools. Long ago, the Chinese developed feng shui, an art form that employs a nine-block color grid (or bagua) to create optimal balance and harmony in spaces. But until the 1990s few Americans painted interior walls anything but shades of white.

Today, most paint companies have so many colors, picking one can feel overwhelming. Applying the feng shui bagua can reduce options and, thereby, stress. So can an old Martha Stewart tip: choose colors from an item, say a painting or textile, you find pleasing. The Middle Eastern rug in my office guided my choices for that room's walls and floor.

But remember that light can be a trickster. Online, a brown-beige I picked looked similar to the color of paper grocery bags. On the walls it made the room look like the inside of a cantaloupe. Fortunately, it took only a day and $100 of new paint to change the room from fruit- to nut-colored.

Painting the exterior of a home is far more expensive than a room, adding importance, and anxiety, to choosing colors. Last summer I received bids to paint my home between $6,000 and $7,000, plus materials. I needed the winter to save up the funds and consider my options.

Plank-width aluminum siding was installed over the original clapboard easily 50 years ago. I wanted to remove it, but feared it might trigger a cascade of necessary repairs. For instance, I know from photos that the back door was moved from the corner to the center of the back wall. A sheet of plywood might be all that covers the old doorway under the aluminum siding. To prevent budget-busting surprises, the siding stayed.

Claire Cressler lived in the home with his wife, Gloria, for nearly 70 years. When we became next-door neighbors in 2003, he was a long-retired artist and widower and the house was ochre with black trim. After Claire died in 2008, his estate attorney decided to upgrade the 1903 home before selling it. Sadly, the original slate roof was torn off to make way for asphalt shingles. But on the plus side, an energy-efficient gas furnace replaced a mid-century cylindrical gravity furnace that operated similarly to a stove. It had a metal door that was so large, the first time I saw it I recalled how Hansel and Gretel outsmarted the candy-house witch.

The attorney also had the house painted a light teal green with cream trim, but the young couple who bought the home decided it should be a darker shade of teal, which they painted themselves. However, they could not reach the peak under the roof in the front and decide not to bother painting the back of the house, except for where they'd trialed the darker color around the back door.

The house remained like this for the decade I've owned it until last summer, when I bought tiny jars of paint and sampled colors on both sunny and shady sides of the house. (The cantaloupe surprise taught me well.) The previous owners\' efforts combined with my color testing resulted in a multi-toned hodgepodge on the back and south sides of the house. It looked like a Disney monster (Mad Madam Mim, perhaps) with a polychromatic pox and I winced in my car each time I rounded the corner of my street.

When spring arrived, I was grateful I hadn't had the cash on hand last year because after a year of seeing the sampled sections, I no longer wanted those colors. Instead, I fell victim to a current trend seen across the country: I had the entire house painted dark blue (Hague Blue by Farrow & Ball). Instead of white trim, as is often used on dark blue homes, I chose Farrow & Ball's Cooking Apple Green, a warm cream with a hint of green that complements the blue.

Magic Painters, a family-owned company I have used before on interior projects, spent a week metamorphosing my home. They did not use a sprayer, as was done 15 years ago, but painted every inch by hand, two coats. Protected by storm windows screwed into the exterior frame, the three original bay windows on the first floor were not painted 15 years ago and remained black. My painters removed the storm windows, re-caulked the sash windows, painted them Cooking Apple Green and washed all the glass, leaving nary a smudge.

The transformation of our home simply by having it painted is delightfully satisfying. Each time we pull onto our street, even now, two months later, someone in the car comments on just how wonderful it looks.

Contact Holly Christensen at whoopsiepiggle@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Fresh color brings new life to exterior of 1903 Akron home | Holly Christensen