CoHo Reaches Color Consensus!

It's been over a year now since the idea of picking colors for buildings was introduced. The buildings at CoHo will soon be due for fresh exterior paint, because it's our proactive approach to sustaining long-lasting structures. Even our buildings need some love!

So here at CoHo we like to use consensus for making decisions. An entire Color Team was derived to lead our community in the color picking process.

How much energy does it take to pick colors?

Who would have guessed that choosing exterior paint color would be so exhausting? Well, it was for CoHo. Lively discussions were had for many months. Needs were not being met. Tears were shed. Many meetings ensued. Apparently it takes a lot of energy for a community to make a decision that we'll live with for the next 10 years. But it brought us together and connected us.

Let's take a step back in time and ask the question: Who picked the original exterior paint colors of CoHo? The architects did. That made it easy for everybody.

A look at some buildings with original colors.

Why did it take so much energy to pick colors?

The psychology of color is interesting. Colors are known to influence human behaviors, perceptions, emotions, and even affect our moods. We also have a strong need to express individuality through color. And most of us have a desire to just feel good about things we see every day since we see their colors.

Consensus decision-making is a group decision-making process in which group members develop, and agree to support, a decision in the best interest of the whole.

CoHo is a community that consists of individuals. But these individuals choose to live here and support a process to make decisions in the best interest of the whole community. We also decided that each unit will have an exterior area to express individuality so that our need for creative autonomy can be met.

So what colors were picked?

The bike barn provided an experimental area for colors. How did these colors get picked? Haha...let's just say these magically appeared one day and offered a good selection of colorful options we could start from.

CoHo bike barn color samples from 2015
After many meetings with great facilitation, some straw polls on sample color palettes, and assistance from a Sherwin-Williams representative, here's the colors we reached consensus on. These are Sherwin-Williams colors, but you can click on each one to see a lot more info about the color.

Different arrangement of same colors.

Now where are the colors going?

We're currently in the process of deciding on design details. Like should we have 2 or 3 colors per building? What about trim color? What about the larger buildings where we might want to split into even more colors?

So let's leave it at that and continue this story when we've figured it out.  😉

Posted in Community, Decision Making, Facilitation, Long-Range Planning, Meetings, Participation and tagged , , .

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  1. Pingback: CoHo Reaches Consensus on Color Design! | CoHo Ecovillage

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