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When we bought our house the door was completely white. And totally boring. It's the original 1950s door though and so I've never been really keen to change it because it has a lot of character - and it has this cool little peek door you can open to see who is outside without having to actually open the door. Shortly after we moved in I changed the house trim to green and painted the door green. A few years later I got tired of that and painted it black, along with the trim. Which I liked until this year when I got bored with it again (notice a trend...)

So this year - after briefly flirting with idea of getting a whole new door (and quickly realizing that finding something as cool as what I already have would be virtually impossible) I painted it Red. Don't you love how that turned out? I'm really digging it.

Lately I find myself doing this thing where I drive down a street and look at a house and think things like "I really wish you'd paint that part of your house gray and change the front door to red" or "I really wish that was more of a yellowy stucco instead of straight up beige...it would vastly improve the look of that 70s Mexican style architecture you have going on there" or "Wow wouldn't that 60s cut out work look awesome in bold Hermes orange against a stark white paint job on that house?" Unfortunately dear reader, these people are not actually asking for my advice. I'm afraid none of those paint jobs will probably ever take place. So I offer some general advice and possible ideas here:

In almost every case I can think of, a door painted a contrasting color to your house will just look better. And in almost every case I can think of, a bold color will really add something awesome! Even inside the house there are ways to add color to doors that make your decor more interesting.

Some great examples I've been collecting:don't you love that red against the gray and black? so modern
Okay this is blue and the house is sort of blue too, but it's such a great bold electric blue! Wouldn't this color of door look awesome on so many houses? There are a bunch of white/beige stucco homes across the street from me (the houses on this side of the street are 1950s built on the other side of the street they demo'd an orange grove and made a subdivision in the 90s) - sometimes I look at all those beige doors and wish someone would do something like this! Especially if your house was white, this would look really cool I think...

this is awesome sauce - but hard to do. But in this case, with the white siding and the turquoise shutters it looks so great. Probably best with a Victorian though. wow - what a great green. I love the high gloss on this too.

you know, the back of the door doesn't have to be the same as the front, they can be two different colors. If you have something you'd rather not paint in front of your house (or if you belong to one of those wicked home owners assoc.'s that won't let you have a personality) you could always just paint the interior.


I sincerely hope the front of this door is painted the same color as the back, because it looks amazing. Come to think of it - purple front doors on some of those houses across the street would be great too...

everything here is so neutral and burberry-esque and then along comes this lovely baby blue door to save the day...


Okay yes, this is just black. but see how great it is against the white walls and the wood floors? Normally I kind of never like rooms with gray walls, but I do like this room, which I can mainly attribute to the green french doors

doesn't yellow and gray look lovely here? This gray is more of a charcoal, which is what I ended up doing in my back yard with a red french door, I'm kind of loving the charcoal grays on exteriors with bold doors:
My first thought was to do these doors and the trim in an Orange, my family was casting a veto vote before the paint was even dry so I had to go with the red (which I ended up really liking anyway) but It think the orange could look really great with charcoal too -

See? Told ya.

I love this red sliding door in a high gloss surrounded by all this earthy wood, it adds so much great drama
okay this is bold, but I like it. In a house with a lot of vintage or just a lot of personality - this is really a great idea
Love, Love, Love! Last, but by far not least.