The Gray Houses

Another new house with gray siding, and well, gray everything

Let me start this by saying that personally, I like gray things. I wear gray t-shirts, drive a gray pickup truck, use weathered gray wood as trim and wainscoting in my bedroom. I have been into gray for a while. It has a nice feel to it and I think it looks good with my skin tone. Even after writing this article, I will still be into the color gray.

There is a gray movement going on in architecture right now. From commercial buildings to rural residential, everything is turning gray. I am convinced that this gray movement traces back to a style that was coming into vogue when I was in architectural design school around 2011. Back then, we called it Scandinavian modern; a style from predominantly Norway and Sweden that used fairly standard vernacular house shapes in new ways. The early designers used the same material palette of wood siding and shingle roofing that makes up most residential houses, but they included large window walls, off-center gables, and sparse kitchen layouts. The houses were either painted flat black or white, often both in contrast, with blonde birch wood accents. Eaves were trimmed tight to the house and window sashes were all painted black. I visited Norway and Sweden in 2011 and fell in love with the style. As young architectural designers, this style was sexy, smooth, luxurious but still attainable. There was no exotic steel or concrete like most modern architecture. I designed every school project in this style.

Time went on. I fell in love again, this time with historic architecture, particularly the late 1800’s mining town residential styles. One of the reasons I fell in love with Philipsburg is because of its residential architecture. While I was changing my stripes and falling in love with old colorful houses, the Scandinavian modern look started to go mainstream in suburban America. On this side of the ocean, it blended in aspects of the modern American farmhouse movement, white siding, black trim, black windows. Once limited to the haute architecture design world, this new style started to morph into the standard residential suburban home. In mass subdivisions across America, where once beige and taupe were the go-to colors, white and black became the color palette that made your house stand out against all the others.

Starting in about 2017, as if the white and black started blending together, I noticed that gray was becoming a popular color in this housing palette. The clean white was now a sleek gray. One by one, town by town, gray started becoming ubiquitous in American architecture. Every single new commercial building from hotels to libraries to Taco Bell started revamping with gray siding. I traveled across the United States repeatedly and noticed it everywhere.

The tipping point came in 2022 when it finally came home to Philipsburg. As new houses started flying up all around town, I started taking bets with my fellow construction workers on siding color. I could tell, just from the style of the house under construction that the designers/owners were enamored by what we used to call Scandinavian modern. Without fail, every house went up in a shade of gray or black. In total, I counted 36 houses built or renovated in the town limits of Philipsburg in 2021 and 2022. Of those 36 houses, 24 were dominantly shades of gray. In several cases, brand new gray houses went up right next to new gray houses. Gray from foundation to roof. I have photographic proof.

It is strange to see a trend in motion. I don’t mind the look of the gray houses. The majority of them look very nice. The old traits from Scandinavian modern have generally been Americanized. As an architecture nerd, I have watched the styles morph. The birch wood and shiplap are now vinyl and plastic. The eaves are not quite the same shape. But the dark window sashes are certainly in vogue, as are the natural wood accents. Overall, they aren’t ugly houses by any means. They are all different designs, but they are all the same color.

It just baffles me that literally everyone has bought into this trend of gray. I joke that there must be a sale at the building supply stores on gray products, because house after house keeps getting gray siding, gray roofing, gray trim. There is a smaller trend, usually among the wealthier clients of painting siding black, while most middle class houses include some with a blue tint or a green tint, but all of these are really shades of gray. Over and over. Another two houses were just renovated and re-sided this winter, side by side, by different owners, both with gray siding. My data just accounts for Philipsburg, but across Montana and across the country, I have noticed the gray trend. Am I watching a style of a generation, the way we look at Brutalist architecture from the 1960’s or shag carpet from the 1970’s? It makes me curious. Why gray?

I just got the plans for the next house that we were just contracted to build, starting in a month or so. A young couple, very creative, very cool, probably going to be nice clients. A decent design with a lot of old Scandinavian modern principles incorporated. And the siding is dark gray.