How to choose the right color of landscape rock for your property

Home » Blog » How to choose the right color of landscape rock for your property

It goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: you want your property to look GREAT!

Depending on your location, you may have to rely on crushed rock for the majority of your landscaping. So, how do you make the most out of it, and how do you choose the right colored rock for the job? There are a few approaches. It all depends on what emotional effect you want to create in the viewer.

You may say: come on now, we’re talking about rock here! What do emotions have to do with it?

Well, don’t forget, the rocks you are using are being used to paint a picture, just as paints are created to make a painting.

When it comes to landscape design, we are creating a form of art, which will cause viewers to have an emotional response.

So, what kind of effect do we want to create?

Let’s look at a few:

Calm

1. If you want a calm, conservative emotion or effect. Mimic the color of the natural ground in the area, with your crushed landscape rock. Soft earth-tones, neutral colors will help achieve this effect.

Dramatic

2. If you want to create drama and impact then choose a contrasting color for your crushed rock. So, that if the natural ground is a light beige, go with a dark brown. This makes your property really stand out.

Creative

3. If you want to create a bit of a ‘wow factor’, when people look at your grounds, consider using layers of multiple colors in your landscape rock. A two or three tone swirling design can grab a lot of attention and curiosity. By using curves, you can hook the eye and then have it follow along.

While there are others, the above three are your most commonly used.

Now, in the world of color, there are some rules that you can follow which will help guide you and make sure you end up with something aesthetic. Let’s face it, choosing colors can be very hard. Why do you think so many people just wear the color black?! It’s easy and requires no thought. Well, unfortunately, we can just ‘paint it black’ for all our landscapes, otherwise they would absorb so much sunlight that the space would turn into an open oven!

Rules of Color: 60/30/10

60% of your ‘canvas’ (in this case your landscape), should be a neutral tone. For landscaping, this will be the main color you choose.

30% of should be a secondary color that complements the neutral tone. For landscaping, this will be the plants, shrubs, trees, or boulders.

10% should be a contrasting bright accent color. For landscaping, this color will come from the flowers that you plant. Remember to go easy on them, you just want 10%, otherwise it is over-whelming. If you have too much, it loses its effect because it is too much for the human eye to look at, and the viewer will just zone out.

These are not absolute rules. When it comes to art (which landscape design most definitely is) you can always break the rules, but the above do provide a very useful guideline which takes a lot of the guess work out of making the decision of: what color should I choose?

A rainbow of color

At Kalamazoo we have the VERY best selection of colors in the NV, CA, AZ area. If you don’t believe me just visit our website catalogs and see for yourself! From deep rich earth tones, to stunning blues and purples, we know we’ll have the color you want.