Color of the sanctuary building exterior

WHAT COLOR will the façade of our historic building be, after it is waterproofed this summer? 

The present blue-gray color — which is not original — is not a prudent choice from a maintenance perspective. Therefore last summer, given our need for a lighter and more neutral color, an ad-hoc committee recommended two color choices instead.

Left side:  Southwest corner of façade, last painted 17 years ago.
Right side:  Western edge of south wall, recoated in July 2023.
(As usual, click/tap on an image to enlarge it.)

This post updates a similar one from 3/30/23, which I wrote before the committee met, and before a color was selected for the south wall exterior. 

Special coating

The surface coating is an industrial-strength elastomeric coating called Dow Corning Dowsil AllGuard. It comes in 55 standard colors. 

This coating lasts more than a decade when properly applied to a wall. However, it has a short shelf life: less than 6 months. The minimum quantity for purchase is a 5-gallon bucket. 

Cameron Figgins (our waterproofing contractor) explains, 

“This is the most specialized wall coating that I know of in the world, and there’s only certain places you go to to get it.”

It’s not available at normal paint stores or home improvement stores. Any special tinting is done only at a certain location outside of Los Angeles and then shipped locally. Last summer, at least, this coating was in short supply due to high demand. 

Color committee

Last summer, Roberta Tishman led the effort to arrive at an ideal color scheme for the exterior of Mishkon’s historic sanctuary building. She conferred with Sue Kaplan and with Lonnie Friedman, as well as with a professional consultant, Mahana Ray of Sydney Harbour Paints. They considered a wide range of options, before rejecting most of them.

Our main technical constraint, which is imposed by the strong sunlight on the south and west faces, was taken as a given. Namely: avoid dark colors, because they hasten deterioration and thus increase maintenance costs. The committee did take note that this historic building’s original color was a light green. The context of surrounding buildings and spaces was also considered. Ultimately they settled on two colors. A sample of each one was applied to the south wall on June 27:

(Reminder: iPhone camera and computer display screens
show only relative colors, not absolute ones.)

The color on the left is the manufacturer’s standard color, called Seafoam, which was the favored standard color by far. The committee’s distant second choice among the standard colors was much closer to white, called Cumulous. None of the available blue shades were deemed acceptable.

The color on the right is a grayish blue, the custom color that the consultant recommended, and which the committee favored as its first choice. It is one of Sydney Harbour’s standard colors, called Half Hailstorm. (They don’t give out its color formula.) 

How the choice was made for the south wall

Unfortunately, we were unable to adopt the custom color for the south wall. It was not feasible due to the demanding schedule (when combined with the internal painting that was to follow immediately) and the limited contractor resources (given the extremely high demand for waterproofing services induced by the extreme winter rainfall). We had to go with the standard Seafoam color. Happily, it has mostly received good reviews. 

Looking ahead to the façade

When the façade is redone, the color choice may be revisited. Conceivably the committee’s first-choice custom color could be adopted. (We could make it a condition of the contract up front, so that the vendor takes it into account when organizing and scheduling the job.) This assumes that the-powers-that-be are okay with our continuing to have different colors on the building walls.

That being said, I do remain a bit concerned that a custom color would probably make future touch-up more difficult. Our vendor would then need to order the touch-up batch in advance via special arrangement. But that is not necessarily a reason to avoid our having a color that made the committee happy.