10 striking & inspiring black houses

Most of us wouldn’t think twice about filling up our wardrobes with black clothing but would you dare painting your housefront in black?

It’s a major statement when most surrounding houses have white or pale yellow facades but we went ahead with our home in London and painted the whole housefront in Railings from Farrow & Ball (see picture here) and should we, one day, own a piece of land with an amazing view, I would definitively do the whole black thing again.

I find black houses in the middle of nowhere very alluring, like somethi

Black house at Camusdarach in Scotland by Raw Architecture Workshop

I was also taken by this beautiful architectural house built on the Mornington Peninsula in Australia. You can see the house tour here. Its really large wall-to-wall window with view on an amazing landscape fascinates me and I could see, how a good armchair and the view would just be enough…

A striking house on the

The initial design brief for this house located at Camusdarach Sands, was to create a home that would enable the Owners to view the sunrises and sunsets over the nearby mountains and surrounding islands. How amazing does this look!?

We did…

and I can’t tell you how happy I am we took the jump.

I think it’s an easy call to paint a modern building standing in the middle of nowhere in dark colours or in the middle of nature (we did it for our tree house in France) – a black cube will always stand out and looks beautifully striking.
Painting a traditional British Victorian house was a little bit more challenging. First, there aren’t many residential homes painted totally in dark colours so it was hard to see an example of what it could look like. Second, we were very keen to modernise our home while respecting the character and period features of the building.

In the end, we painted everything in Railings by Farrow & Ball except the inside of the windows and the wooden frames that we kept white to achieve a clean, modern look and it looks amazing (see this photo I shared last month before we painted the inside of the windows).

Now you will ask…what about the door?!

Still negotiating on this…

A few years back, we agreed as a family that since I was doing the whole house in white and Steve’s territory was the garden, Mila could choose the colour of our door…of course she went for the most bubble pink she could find!! Hahaha

I have to admit, it has been pretty cool to come home to a bright, pink door. I remember once, seeing a little girl walking down the street with her dad and stopping right in her tracks when she saw our door, saying she wanted the same door.

I tried to convince Mila that my initial inspiration here, would be a much better choice but she is not having it and still arguing her point so I think we will end up using Nancy’s

In France, black cladding has become Atelier Ordinaire’s signature style

1. Black House by RAW | 2. Architectural house design by Studio Four | 3.

1. The Black rubber house, Dungerness | 2. Ridge Road Residence | 3. Via Homeadore | 4. Scandinaviandeko (AA Butterfly chair from here)