How to Coordinate Shutters with Your Home Exterior

Adding shutters is a great way to enhance your home’s curb appeal. To make them really enhance your exterior’s style, give thought to how the shutters coordinate with the rest of the house. Here are tips for aesthetically unified outdoor design.

Approaching shutters as an extension of your exterior design makes them feel seamlessly integrated rather than randomly tacked on.

Match architectural style

Choose a shutter style fitting your home’s existing lines and details:

• Angled slats for craftsman bungalows
• Curved shutters for Cape Cods
• Louver-less panel shutters for contemporary homes

Let the architecture guide your shutter profile.

Complement exterior materials

Coordinate shutter textures with siding for cohesion:

• Cedar shakes with wood shutters
• Brick with composite shutters
• Stucco and stone with metal shutters

Repeat or contrast the exterior’s key material.

Align with trim color

Match or pick a complementary color to exterior accents like the garage door and window trim.

For example, navy shutters on a home with white siding and navy trim.

Consider landscaping hues

Tie in the colors of surrounding trees, plants and flowerbeds with corresponding shutter colors.

Sage green shutters could enhance greenery while yellow brings out flowers.

Reflect roofing tones

Echo the shade of your roof with similar shutters:

• Gray roof and shutters
• Red door and red shutters
• Black shingles, black shutters

Roof color provides inspiration.

Use consistent styling

Don’t mix and match too many contradictory shutter types and profiles around the house.

Keep the look cohesive by limiting the variations.

Making conscious exterior design choices creates an integrated, polished look from the shutters up. Take cues from what’s already there.