The Palm Coast City Council appears on the verge of repealing most restrictions on house colors. As a consequence, homeowners would be allowed to paint houses in darker, less light-reflecting colors than allowed in the city’s 25-year history.
“I say we get rid of it. Get rid of it all together,” Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris said today during a discussion on paint-color rules in the city. “Paint your house whatever color you want.”
He had the full support of the four council members present. “I fall more in the non-restricted category here,” Council member Ty Miller said. “I think it’s people’s personal property and their decisions to make, and what I think is great other people don’t, and vice versa. Also, what is popular today is not popular 30 years from now, so having to constantly revise color schemes based on popularity seems to me onerous.”
Miller cast doubt on the claim that paint colors can bring down property values. “I’ve never seen any data to support that. So if that is the case, I’d like to see that data,” he said. He’s seen “great looking very dark houses out there,” but also concedes that it’s subjective. He was willing to have a few prohibited colors–five or so as proposed by the city–but would lift all other restrictions. The standard measure used to define allowed and disallowed colors–the light reflective value, or LRV–would be scrapped.
But the move occurs in opposition to environmental trends that are encouraging lighter, whiter urban colors as a tool of fighting climate change, as darker colors absorb heat rather than reflect light and require homes to spend more energy on cooling, thus contributing more carbon emissions. The environmental part of the equation was not discussed at today’s meeting.
Council member ray Stevens initially favored regulations in place, as they are now. He then joined the rest of the council to go with no restrictions except for the banned colors.
“Some of the colors may be offensive, but I agree with some of the comments that were presented here,” Council member Charles Gambaro said calling the new approach the “Bunnell option,” since Bunnell has no such restrictions on its books.
The administration will draft an ordinance to that effect. It will have to be approved in two readings later this year.
It was good news for Mindy Melendez, who described herself as “the problem child.” It’s her navy-blue house that has been the catalyst for the city’s discussions since June about possibly changing the rules.
“It’s been navy blue for a year,” Melendez said. “Nothing has drastically happened. It hasn’t faded. I liked it blue. I called the city and said, Hey, what are the stipulations? Because I’m I’m a broker. I’m a real estate agent. I’ve sold houses. I’ve never dealt with this before. They told me earth tone. I looked up the earth tones. Blue is an earth tone. So we painted our house blue, and then somebody down the street, 10 houses down, asked how I got my house blue, and called the city. So that’s how this all began. I am asking you guys to, if nothing else, look at my house color and put it within the ordinance that it’s an okay color.”
Melendez added: “It doesn’t bother me that you paint your house whatever color you want. This is our money that we put into our house. We bought a foreclosed house. We added on, and that’s our life savings for our children. I painted it blue and white, and here we are today.”
The previous council starting last June looked to relax restrictions on house colors, but not to go nearly as far as the council proposed today, and not as far as Melendez was asking. The city uses the so-called “light reflectance value” scale to determine whether the color meets the city code. LRD is a measure of visible light reflected from a surface when illuminated by a light source. The LRV scale is measured on a percentage basis, with 0 percent (least reflective) being black, and 100 percent being white (most reflective). Purple, blue, orange, green and red are in the 75 and higher range. (See LRV examples here.)
Current city code requires light pastel colors and white paint to have an LRV of 80 or more, and earth tones–shades of brown, beige, terra-cotta, sage, the famous shades of gray, which may or may not reach 50–must have an LRV of 80 or more. The rules do not affect trim colors. For example, even garage doors may be painted black, or other colors that would be disallowed on walls.
Prohibited colors include fuchsia, magenta, purple and orange. Yellow might or might not be added to the banned colors.
Bunnell and Flagler Beach have no paint color restrictions, except in Flagler Beach’s downtown. Daytona Beach prefers certain colors but doesn’t require them. Ormond Beach requires earth tones and pastels. Subdivision such as Grand Haven, Park Place and Palm Coast Plantation regulate house colors through their homeowner associations.
The administration responded to the council’s proposal to expand allowable colors by developing a new category called “light bermuda.” Those would include varieties of peach, pink, lavender, blue and green as long as they each have an LRV of 65 of more. The city’s planning board supported the administration’s proposal. It also recommended adding yellow to prohibited colors, because board members think the color is too bright and too loud. (Paint on City Hall’s outside walls, incidentally, is considered terra-cotta.) But the administration’s gradual relaxation would still maintain LRV-based restrictions.
That’s the restrictions the council felt are no longer necessary.
“I just think orange and blue are great colors for houses, but what do I know?” Council member Charles Gambaro said.
“Goodness gracious,” the mayor said. “I have an orange house around the corner for me.”
In any case the city gets “minimal” complaints about house colors each year, Code Manager Barbara Grossman said. No one sits in judgment at the city, approving or rejecting a paint job before it’s done. If there are problems, they are complaint-driven. Some houses may be painted in outrageous colors and never get a complaint. Others may get complaints, and subsequent action by the city.
The proposal the council is requesting today may remove most paint-color related policing from code enforcement’s responsibilities, depending on the way the proposed ordinance is drafted–and whether it survives the workshops and readings ahead, or possible second thoughts on the city’s environmental blinders.
