Charlotte’s white-hot house trend

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More homeowners are painting their houses white. But some architects and consultants say the ‘farmhouse’ vibe glosses over worries about character and structural problems.

SNOW PLACE LIKE HOME: White homes, with their bright esthetic and clean lines, are the hot design trend in many areas of Charlotte. But how long will the trend last?

by Cristina Bolling

Douglas Welton is no clairvoyant, but he has an uncanny sense for when a house in his Charlotte neighborhood of brick ranch homes is about to change hands.

He just looks for it to turn white.

“My neighbor across the street is going to put his house up for sale soon. … He’s doing his bathrooms, and amazingly, all of a sudden, one day his house is white,” said Welton, chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission. [Edited on 5/9 to correct that Welton is still the chair of the planning commission]

“Up at the corner, the neighbors moved in, they did renovations, magically their house was white,” Welton said. “Across the street from them, they wanted to sell their house. Magically, it was white.”

What’s happening on Welton’s street in the Madison Park neighborhood of brick homes from the 1950s and ’60s off Park Road is playing out across Charlotte and even in the city’s outskirts, where brick homes are being painted white at a rapid-fire pace, and new-construction single-family homes and townhouses are springing up the color of snow (many with dark windows and gutters for contrast).