The uni­form and gray­ish ex­te­rior treat­ment of the build­ing blends in with the cold cloudy sky of Scot­land. The com­pletely asym­met­ri­cal con­struc­tion forms dif­fer­ent roof lev­els and shapes, and also records Mackintosh’s ap­pre­ci­a­tion for A.W. N. Pugin’s pic­turesque util­ity where the ex­te­rior con­tour evolves from the in­te­rior plan­ning. The min­i­mum dec­o­ra­tion, heavy walls, and rec­tan­gu­lar and square win­dows ex­press a strong, sober con­struc­tion. The ex­te­rior qual­i­ties of the build­ing are nearly the op­po­site of the warm, ex­otic, care­fully dec­o­rated and smooth in­te­rior. Again, Mack­in­tosh re­lates to Pugin’s the­ory by min­i­miz­ing ex­te­rior dec­o­ra­tion to em­pha­size the in­te­rior de­sign: the tran­si­tion from the out­side world into a safe, fan­tas­tic in­side space. Paint analy­sis of the har­ling on the ex­te­rior shows that it might have been left as an un­painted pale grey ini­tially