Anyone who has built or renovated a house (not least in Singapore) can probably sympathize with the frustration of trying to find nice house numbers. I was myself introduced to this little quandry when I expected that it would be a breeze to find decent house numbers and signage. I was wrong.
Unless you want to use stick-on or nailed in numbers from a hardware shop (which have improved tremendously and are really a pretty good option), anything that is manufactured from aluminium or stainless steel, which sits up nicely and casts a slight shadow, is going to cost you quite dearly. In our case, our contractor came back with a quote, with the illustration below, for $500. That included installation and they are cut from stainless steel but still, $500 for 3 numbers? Working out to more than $150 each? For 6 inch numbers?
Not to mention, aren't they ugly? They really are. I didn't tell my contractor. (He thinks he has good taste. He has arguably good taste and I'll say this as a compliment, he doesn't have Bad Taste). But seriously, I wasn't about to be scammed in quite so obvious a fashion. It really made me question if I had been too lax with his quotations, such that he even suggested that kind of budget.
Particularly when you can buy these beauties on the internet for a mere $24 from Design Within Reach. Even that price might seem a bit rich to you (as opposed say, to the stick on type which are $8 each) but they really are very nicely designed and hopefully, of a pretty good quality and I appreciate the thought and work that went into creating this design. DWR worked with Dion Neutra to produce these Neutra House Numbers true to the 1930s originals that his father, Richard Neutra, used on mid-century buildings in Palm Springs and Los Angeles.
They sit about 0.75 inch off the wall and are 4 inches in height. That seemed like it might be a bit small for us, and I was hoping for a "delivery to Singapore" option, so I went online at Amazon to look at some other alternative, including the Blomus house numbers. Crafted out of stainless steel, these are a German brand with the numbers in a thick, bold font and sizes up to 6 inch or 8 inch in height. If the house were larger, I would definitely consider these, I loved the wide surface of the numbers- I think that would really show off the smoothness of the stainless steel to good effect and they looked like great quality. Particularly in the tropics, I believe stainless steel would weather and last a bit better than other materials. All the options that I found online, added up, including shipping, to about $100-130USD, as versus the $500 that I would otherwise have been charged. If you can have them shipped to a US address and forwarded, it would be less expensive, at perhaps $75, but I didn't want to trouble anyone further.
On Amazon, I also found, for $29, house numbers made by Modern House, which led me to the website of Modern House Numbers. This is a family run business that I really want to recommend, and
this is their website. Their story (Rick and Brandy) is that while renovating their own house, they felt the gap for well-designed and inexpensive house numbers, which led them to design and fabricate numbers for houses and letterboxes. What do I love about their site? Many things- they allow you to choose from a drop-down list of 4 inch to 15-inch number sizes (wow for initiative!) and they have a preview box for different fonts which they make. My favourite are their beautiful Palm Springs (Neutra) and Socal lettering. They also take on custom projects. While you are debating your choice, the slideshow of different fonts on a variety of houses plays, which helps you to visualize what the best choice is. The ordering process is quick, easy, the Paypal payment feature included international credit cards and they ship internationally for a reasonable fee. The whole process was painless and thoughtfully designed.
Hands down one of the best website I used in the home renovations process and the price off their website was of course, slightly better than Amazon. I was also glad to be able to support an independent business and if you have a similar need or some time, you should definitely check out their site and products!
