The Hunt For Grey-Infused Eggplant

“It looked like a prison,” said Deborah S. about her recently-purchased ranch-style home. The exterior was plain and cold, almost industrial-looking. Up close, the stone becomes a shimmery mosaic of grey and cool neutrals speckled with silver mica. But something about the exterior of the house didn’t look quite like home.

Making a new house feel like your own can be a tricky process. Though it’s surely a bit trickier for some than for others—such as, perhaps, a colorblind art collector, whose sense of aesthetic is as particular as her sense of color is murky. But with the help of Timberlane and renowned painter Ford Smith, Deborah was able to create exactly what she needed to fall in love with her home.

Deborah is a scientist from Doylestown, Pa. Though her occupation is left-brain, she has an incredible eye for art and design. The inside of her home is filled with original paintings, walls perfectly arranged and harmoniously curated. The outside of her home, however—its grey stone exterior and wide, short structure—needed something.

“I knew, as soon as I saw this house for the first time, that it needed shutters—and I wanted to get real shutters.” Real shutters. A rarity in most neighborhoods. And when asked how she knew that shutters were the missing element?

“It just...came. To me, it looked like that’s what was missing.” Deborah did some research, and stumbled across Timberlane. “I had a lot of confidence in Timberlane,” she said. “It just seemed like Timberlane was the main place.”

Deborah’s ranch-style home in Doylestown, Pa., complete with her new Timberlane Shutters, flowering landscaping, and standing stone fountain by Robert Wertz of Igneous Rock Gallery. Curb appeal: it’s all about the finishing touches.

Deborah worked with Account Executive Sean Childs to design the shutters she imagined. She decided upon maintenance-free Endurian® Shutters made up of 60/40-configured flat panels with Ogee trim, and complete hardware for functional installation. Still, there was a final, integral element to the design that was missing.

“The very hardest thing was the color,” said Deborah. “Almost every color, I see differently.” And so began the trickiest part of designing her custom shutters.

“It was really all about trying to uncover what her desire was for the project,” said Sean. “Going through the process of her deciding on different colors and giving my two cents, just to try and capture her perfect picture of what these would look like.”

“Everybody said, ‘black would look nice,’ but—I wouldn’t buy a black car, either,” said Deborah. While black shutters would be a typical choice for this home, she is not a person with “typical taste.” Naturally, she wasn’t interested in a “typical” design for her home, either.

She emailed a picture of her shutterless home to her friends Ford and Cristi Smith, asking for help. “He’s one of my favorite artists, and he is a color master," she said. "They couldn’t find a picture, but they said ‘grey-infused eggplant.’ And then, I was on a mission to find ‘grey-infused eggplant.’”

Luckily, Ford and Cristi know Deborah’s taste well.

“She has a distinctive palette,” said Cristi. “I know, when Ford creates a painting, if Deborah is gonna love it. She likes those soothing, cool colors: the blues, the purples, the greens and greys. And Ford knows her palette, as well—so we were talking about purples, and he said ‘eggplant’—and that was how we eventually came up with “grey-infused eggplant.’”

After poring over pages of swatches, Deborah found the color she was looking for. Thanks to Timberlane’s custom color-matching, it was professionally applied through their multi-step painting process. At last, the shutters—and home—were complete.

“It couldn’t have been better. It made a tremendous difference to me.” Standing on her lawn, Deborah says of her new shutters: “I just think they’re so happy and elegant.” And her home today? A far cry from looking ‘like a prison,’ indeed.