Traditional/Historic Paint Colors: John Crosby Freeman

Selection and placement of paint colors for exteriors and interiors

Business Name: The Color Doctor
Phone: 1-610-539-3010
Email: thecolordoctor@att.net

After countless hours and uncounted expenses, you’ve finally restored your old house. Everything is historically appropriate, down to the chair rail, door mouldings and newel post. Now come the concluding questions: What colors should you paint it? What colors would have been available, both for the interior and exterior, back in the day when it was built? How can you find out?

The expert you want to get to know is John Crosby Freeman, best known as the Color Doctor, a nationally recognized expert on historic paint colors. As an architectural historian, John has been dealing with traditional paint colors for American buildings for over 30 years. Among his clients have been some of the major paint manufacturers in the country in addition to historic property owners around the United States.

How did you get started in the field historic paint colors?

I've always been interested in painted surfaces as a historian of architecture and interior design; but my career with historic paint colors began in 1976 with the republication of Devoe Paint Company’s Exterior Decoration countertop display book of 1885. The sub-title I added to the new edition of Exterior Decoration, "Victorian Colors for Victorian Homes" positioned the book as primary source material for the emerging Victorian Revival of the late 20th century. Exterior Decoration was the foundation upon which subsequent Victorian Revival color cards and style guides of the 1980s and early 1990s were built. Over the past 30 years, I have been involved with the creation of eight other historic color cards for Sherwin-Williams, Valspar at Lowe's, and The Winterthur Museum.

Why are specialized paint colors necessary in home restoration?

The Great American Color Card and the style guides that sometimes supported them were inventions of a new post-Civil War industry to promote its ready-mixed paint. Their goal was to stop house painters from mixing their own paint and sell them factory-made paint. During the 1880s and 1890s their primary target was exterior paint. During the decades prior to WWII, it was interior paint. Despite these efforts, the demise of paint made by painters was slow in coming.

Although ready-mixed paint was triumphant beginning with the 1960s, the need to alter its colors by hand has remained constant to this day, because colors often require adjustment to satisfy the requirements of the job.

So, where are we now with historic paint colors?

Sherwin-Williams is the only major paint company that maintains some momentum with its Preservation Palette along with the Colonial Williamsburg palette supported by its subsidiary Pratt & Lambert and Martin-Senour brands. The strength of all paint company color cards and style guides is to limit choices and avoid confusion. Limiting choices is also their weakness, because they can't satisfy all individual needs.

Is there a better way?

Yes, Classic Master Painter Colors for Traditional Buildings. My book of revelation is The Painter’s Hand-Book published in Cincinnati in 1887 by B. S. Mills, Secretary of the Master House Painters’ Association that traced its ancestry to 1830 in Philadelphia. Because master painters mixed their own paint, this was the profession targeted by ready-mixed paint companies for a century after the Civil War.

The Painter's Hand-Book features 116 chromo-lithographed colors. Formulas for making them appear in traditional format. Only colorant names are listed, putting the one requiring the largest amount first and the least last. No specific quantities are specified, because master painters knew the relative amounts for each color and how to adjust them for the job site. These formulas reveal the classic methods for making colors lighter and darker.

Are any of these Master Painter Colors still available?

On a whim, I was curious to learn if I could find any of the 116 Master Painter Colors in current Sherwin-Williams color selectors. Surprise! I found all of them! (Many of them are today’s popular colors.) This means that anyone can access Classic Master Painter Colors in their local Sherwin-Williams store. However, the immensely more liberating benefit is the location of each color on ladders of color strips that reveals its tints and shades. You don’t have to be a Master Painter to adjust formulas to make lighter or darker colors. If you could bring old master painters back to life, they would be agog with envy and surprised to see that old is new and new is old.

Are we talking about interior or exterior Master Painter Colors?

The Painter's Hand-Book didn’t separate exterior and interior colors, because it assumed a professional would know the difference.

Classic Master Painter Colors at Sherwin-Williams is the dawn of a new day in traditional colors. No longer are traditional colors confined to color cards and reprints of ready-mixed paint promotional publications. Few imperatives have been replaced by many options.

What do you offer a client who is about to paint his or her newly restored historic house?

The first thing is to explore the client’s likes and dislikes of certain colors. Next, I discuss the architectural logic of the house and suggest ways that contrasting colors can be used to maximize the beauty of the house. I suggest colors and their appropriate placements in accordance with the client’s personal color preferences.

After this is done, what’s the next step?

Like a medical doctor, I write a prescription. But this one is for the client’s painting contractors and it specifies colors and placements.

What do you recommend that the homeowner do when planning a color scheme for his or her house?

• Discover what you can about the architect of the house in order to understand his/her ideas about possible colors. For historic houses, learn as much as you can about colors used in houses built during the same era as your own.
• Keep in mind that if you should choose the color from some other house, you may be surprised if your house looks very different. This is due to difference in style, aspect and surroundings.
• Remember that some colors may not be considered very pretty, but that there are no ugly colors if rightly placed; the art is in so combining them as to bring out their beauty.

Do you have any specific philosophy of how colors used in the past should be used in the contemporary world?

I believe it’s time for historic paint colors to climb out of their old caskets and be revitalized for the 21st century in the larger context of our evolving relationship with the past.