Striking or melodramatic, beautiful or gloomy ? your personal take on houses with black exteriors might depend on your view of the color itself. Conventionally associated with mourning and morbidity, black is often seen as dour and unwelcoming, especially when used with a heavy hand. But for those who appreciate it, black is effortlessly chic, the perfect counterbalance against which brighter colors, busy patterns, and dynamic textures can be properly appreciated.

Monochromatic black houses are certainly a bold choice, but they?re growing increasingly popular, and a new set of rural cottages in the Hudson Valley present an argument to continue the trend.

Thomas Phifer and Partners, an architecture firm based in Manhattan, completed ?Hudson Valley House II? in 2018. Set in an idyllic clearing full of native grasses and surrounded by conifers and deciduous honey locust trees, this ?house? is really a series of small black buildings arranged around a central communal garden. Perhaps you?ll look at the photos of these stark pointy structures half-obscured by trees and liken them to the foreboding huts of scary old witches, or perhaps you?ll be intrigued, drawn in by the interplay of the textural shingles and the lush green branches.
Two of the structures are connected, housing a living and dining room in one and a bedroom in the other. The third, which looks like an archetypal gabled house that’s been cut in half, offers the residents a tranquil c...