Every time I fly into Auckland, my heart sinks at the expanse of dreary grey roofs. And every time I go to southern Europe, I am charmed beyond measure by the colour embraced by home owners.

My daughter’s local village in the south of France is not overly remarkable and, sadly, it lacks either a boulangerie or a patisserie. What is French provincial life if you can not wander down the road each morning to buy a fresh baguette? Daughter tells me the local council has strict rules, however, on colour and approved roofing tiles.

The roofing tiles are pretty much what I describe as half round terracotta pots. They seem to be clay tiles, not concrete, which gives pleasing subtle variations in colour. There is no long run roofing iron to be seen.

But the permitted colour palette is what struck me. No grey. I saw cream – no white – but mostly pale to mid yellows, pink, terracotta and pale terracotta in her village. Other villages and towns allow stronger colours. No grey. Anywhere. It seems the French real estate industry does not have an iron grip with an edict that Investment Grey is the way to higher real estate values.

I stand by my earlier assertions that the time when houses in this country became investments not homes is the time we drained colour from our daily lives and I rue that day.There is quite enough greyness in the world without turning all our suburbs into a panorama of shades of grey.

It led me to ponder what the colours are of Taranaki, where I live. With our high sunshine hours and our high rainfall, we are an area of blues and greens. Blues in the sky and the vast ocean that bounds our entire area. Greens in every hue from dark forest and bush to the verdant green of farms with too much nitrogen promoting bright green grass growth. Almost paua shell colours but with the addition of charcoal black with our huge black sand beaches. Not grey.

Other areas have other dominant colours – golden hues and fruity colours in the Hawkes Bay, tawny browns and golds with azure hills in Central Otago. Not grey. I do not think the current love affair with grey both outdoors and indoors on our real estate helps them meld into the wider landscape. They just look what they are – joyless, timid grey buildings which do nothing to express the character and vitality of their owners.

What we do have here, however, are sandy beaches of every description. The French Riviera and the Mediterranean have a huge reputation, but to a New Zealander, the beaches can often seem… well… underwhelming. Not all of them, but some at least. I don’t see shale rock as a beautiful beach.

I took this photo of cars parked on the beach as we drove past on the road beside the Med, coming out of Nice heading towards Antibes or maybe as far around as Cannes. What you can’t see is that it is a very narrow line of rocky shale that serves equally as carparking and ‘beach’ although it may have been compacted for the cars. I figured everybody must have swimming pools back at their apartments and villas and the beautiful bit is in fact the expanse of sea, not the beach at all.