Is the house sky blue or light blue? It seems like a minor difference, but legally it isn’t. This became apparent during the lawsuit between Jan Jacob Beckeringh and the municipality of Amstelveen this week. Jan Jacob Beckeringh, the owner of the blue house in Amstelveen, thinks the municipality is ‘joking’. The judge agreed with Beckeringh: the color is light blue, the color that is allowed, according to the building permit from 1994.
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The house was already light blue in 1994 and there was a permit for that. That color has faded and become lighter over the years. So Beckeringh decided to paint the facade of the house blue again in the summer of 2019. Several local residents found the new blue color ‘striking and showy’. They complained to the council and they agreed.
The municipality found the color so deviant that it tried to force Jan Jacob Beckeringh to remove the blue color by means of a so-called penalty order. According to the municipal council, it was a color that ‘seriously conflicts with the reasonable requirements of prosperity’. Beckeringh disagrees. “Look, it would be a bit different if you paint your house purple or poison green, but that’s not the case here.”
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Color measurement
What gnaws at Beckeringh is how the city architect came up with the idea that the color is sky blue. “The way they determined the color is not how it should be. That has to be done with a color measurement.” According to him, the reason for the lack of color measurement is simple. “Otherwise it would turn out that it was the color that is allowed.”
300 euro
The court writes the verdict that the houses in the area are white to light sand colored. The blue villa breaks that unity. However, that does not matter, because it is a ‘prosperous’ neighbourhood. The fact that local residents chose from a palette of light sand colors does not mean that a choice that deviates from that palette is an outrage. This is also apparent from the fact that, according to the municipality, light blue was still allowed in 1994. The municipality of Amstelveen must also reimburse the amount that the residents lost to an expert for the lawsuit, 300 euros.
It is not yet clear whether the municipality of Amstelveen will appeal. They are still studying the ruling. But when it happens, Beckeringh is ready. “Essentially they don’t have a case because they joked in the beginning and still do,” Beckeringh said.
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