We have chosen our exterior color scheme!

So we played and played with different combinations of colors.  We liked darker on top, and were considering things like trying to match a color to our toad, the contrast in colors between our interior and exterior, and what would be the easiest to order.

With Newmar, it's not so difficult to change an exterior color - but don't even think about trying to change the design.  So we experimented with several color combinations (see Playing around with the exterior colors) and ended up convincing ourselves that we weren't totally happy with anything.

Our toad will be a Dodge RAM pickup truck.  It's dark gray, so we thought a lot about changing one of the colors to match it.  Then we noticed that the outside would be black, dark gray, light gray and another color that was almost white.  But when you walk into the coach, everything is beige (Cordova interior) and brown.

After spending hours on various combinations, we started browsing around the online inventory photos of our dealer to see how actual photos differed from drawings.  In doing so, we ran across a Dutch Star that wasn't painted using one of the three default Dutch Star schemes (Cannes, Night Sky and Maritime).  We liked the one we saw and my DW looked it up on the specs and saw that its scheme was "Windswept".  Where did that come from?  A quick search of Newmar's site turned up a Windswept exterior color scheme on the Mountain Aire.

Independence RV has this one for sale with the Windswept exterior color scheme.

When we saw it, we knew right away that it was the one we wanted because it has the darker top and the other colors that transition nicely between the exterior and the interior.  It's the one that we've requested.

Wow.  Glad that's done.

9/22/2015 Update:  We received the actual colors for this scheme from Newmar.  Here's how it's listed on the special order sheet:

SPECIAL ORDER EXTERIOR COLORS

SKIN-56680 CAJUN SPICE OBSIDIAN

A-64503 MEDIUM FAWN MET

B-44429B LIGHT CHAMPAINE MET

C-57714 DARK FAWN MET

AWNING LINEN TWEED

Playing around with the exterior colors

Newmar has published three color schemes for their Dutch Star's.  You pick the one you want when you complete your order sheet.  They are called Maritime, Cannes, and Night Sky.  Each design is broken up into four basic colors, with some shading.

Here's their layout for the Cannes Full-painted Exterior Graphics:

My wife would like to use some different colors, or maybe even just use their available colors in her own arrangement.  You're not usually allowed to change the design, just change the colors assigned to "Skin", A, B and C.  The problem is that it's hard to imagine what it might look like using different colors.

Just to be sure we had a color pallette available that matched Newmar's (not that we'll use their colors, but it's nice to have it available), I captured screen shots of the color sections for each of the three exteriors.  It looks like this:

I figured that the best way to play with various color schemes was to use a graphics editor that allows you to select similarly colored irregular shapes - like those waves of color on the RV's graphics.  One such program is called PhotoImpact Pro.  And I just happened to have already had it installed on my computer.

Bringing up PhotoImpact, I was able to individually select the colors and "paint" them with a color of my choosing.  I was able to take the above Cannes graphic and change it to something entirely different in about 20-30 minutes.  It ain't fancy, but you can see the results:  the top is the Cannes and the bottom is my new creation:

Now don't think for one minute that the bottom one is our choice.  I was just playing around.  But now we know what to do to experiment with various colors.

If you have PhotoImpact, just load the basic photo and use the Magic Wand set to a similarity of 10 to select a particular color (like the Skin).  Then select the plus sign "+" and continue clicking on pieces of the skin color until you think you have most of it selected.  Once that's done, select the bucket fill tool.  You can choose a color of your own or use the eyedropper and pick one of their colors from another graphic (like the one I made above).  When you're done, just save it.

I didn't mess with blending and shading.  Newmar does a wonderful job with that.  But using this technique will give us a pretty darn good idea of what we'll want to do with our exterior colors.