A couple have caused outrage from their neighbours by painting their house bright yellow in a bid to brighten up their ‘beige’ town.
Ann Marie Beacock, 70, and her husband wanted to add some colour in their ‘beige’ shaded community with the bright paint job.
The couple spent less than a week painting the entire outside of the detached home with a bright canary yellow colour.
The home, which was painted in July 2022, was once a cream and beige shaded home with a turquoise roof and white panelled windows in 2018.
Previously, the home was a dark blue - green tone in 2007 when it was purchased.
Ann Marie and husband, Leighton, 68, are now very delighted with the finished result but their neighbours in Saskatchewan, Canada, have differing opinions.
Ann, a retired interior designer, said she received an anonymous phone call from a man calling her home "ugly" and saying he no longer wanted to buy an adjacent plot of land.
She added that she had caught other passersby physically averting their eyes away from the house as they walked past.
Ann Marie, who has lived in Dilke for 30 years, said: "We live in a tiny town. All the houses are quite old and beige.
“My husband and I decided our home needed paint and we decided to wake up the town."
Talking to the phone caller, she said he claimed to have lived in her town for 30 years and that she should "tone down the paint colour as it's ugly".
She added: "I was irritated - he must have known my husband and I. We liked it - we loved it - we didn’t care what our neighbours thought.”
“When I see someone looking at my house, I smile at them and they giggle back."
“The negative reactions aren’t really a surprise."
“I hope in another ten years more houses in Canada will be painted colours other than beige.”
Previously Canadians have been encouraged to paint their homes with bright colours, and 'to get creative with colour'.
The Fredericton Heritage Trust called to campaign in 2011, for homeowners to use any colour on their homes other than white.
Liz Burge, a past president with the Heritage Trust, told CBC News “The objective is to create more colourful streetscapes. It's to get with the movement that is elsewhere in Canada about moving house colours into multiple colours".
Homeowners were also encouraged to take a photo of their homes before and after the transformation.
The Fredericton Heritage Trust is a non-profit organisation that promotes and restores architectural heritage.
