Choosing the right roof color is hard.

Most every house in our neighborhood is in the process of getting a new roof, thanks to the destruction of Hurricane Michael.

We are also on the list. We plan to replace ours with a 30-year roof, so the color we choose is important. Not that we will still be here 30 years from now; but still it has to be something we can live with and make the house appealing to a new buyer some day.

We have been given a sample book of different shingles, and the more we look at it the more confused we become.

In an effort to help us make a decision, we took photos of our four favorite colors  and emailed them to our kids to get their opinions.

Out of the four kids, we did not really get a unified response. There were four different opinions. Not much help there.

We have even taken a poll of our friends and co-workers, and again, have reached no consensus.

It is very hard to imagine what a whole roof will look like from a two-inch sample and photos of houses that are nothing like ours. 

Consequently, we have been spending time driving slowly around town looking at all the new roofs to see if we can find any that look like our favorite samples. We hope no one thinks we are casing the neighborhoods; but we are making progress. The field has now been narrowed to three.

Luckily, we seem to be far enough down the list for installation that we have had time to mull this over. In a way, that too is a complication. When you have too long to think about a project it is harder to make up your mind.

Most people in our neighborhood have chosen black or gray shingles.

We have decided we want a nice warm brown shingle to go on our ivory colored house. Then, we have to consider we already have black shutters and a red door.

If we go brown will we have to change them too? It gets complicated.

One thing we know for sure is that with so many different opinions we are sure to please someone, with hopes that we will mostly please ourselves.