Do or don’t: Bright front doors and painter’s remorse

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orange door
orange door © by loop_oh, used under Creative Commons license.
My front door is a drab forest green. The paint job is OLD — it’s chipped, rusted, and dirty, and I need to take care of it, one way or another.

I’ve been collecting color swatches for the new paint job, and over and over I’m being attracted to the brightest ones.

My partner’s not feeling it, though — the rest of our house will stay pretty low-key, but she’s worried that a too-bright front door will be an affront to future buyers.

So help me, Homies: Would a brightly-painted front door affect your decision to buy a certain house? -Sami

Weigh in, guys! I could totally see this dilemma coming up in my future. I know, you could always repaint in case of sale, thought it’s just one more thing to think about when putting your house on the market. What would you do?

Comments on Do or don’t: Bright front doors and painter’s remorse

  1. My Mothers house is a muted earthy green with a bright orange door. People love it. I say go for it. It’s much less likely to put buyers off than a brightly coloured room. I’m going to go look at mine now and see if I can paint it a fun colour too. 🙂

  2. Firstly, I would actually get a feel for your homeowners’ association (if you have one). We don’t have regulations against color, but when a guy down the street painted his house blue with darker blue accents, our homeowners’ FLIPPED and tried to get him to repaint. It wasn’t even an outrageous color – just a little darker than the light blue of many of the other houses.

    Once that is taken into consideration, I’d say DO IT if there’s no problems there.

  3. My house is a PLAIN ol’ boring white. When we moved into our house (we are renting) I knew I was going to paint already. The exterior of the house is white like I mentioned and the shutters and front door were the super pale baby blue, I knew I couldn’t stand for that. but I didn’t want to have to paint the hole exterior. So I painted the door bright Cyan blue and the trim even brighter yellow, it looks great. My husband knows that I love the colors and he is a no color is just fine kinda person. Our landlord recently made a trip from out of state to check in on us and LOVED the door and asked me to paint the shutters too. I love my door, as far as a selling point, depends on the area. But the way I see it, is, it is paint you can’t paint over it. I have pictures of before and after if you are interested you can e-mail me here [email protected]

  4. 1. I’m actually looking to buy a house right now, and I can say that I’m more drawn to homes with bright doors. They grab my attention, they’re pretty, and they’re certainly not boring.

    2. Unless you’re moving within the year, don’t let what you think future buyers will like affect the choices you make with your home. My parents were like that. So they lived in a house with cream colored walls and beige carpet for 15 years! Now they’re trying to sell the house, and for the first time they are painting the walls gorgeous colors (because that’s what today’s buyers want) that they will barely have the time to enjoy.

  5. The house across the street from me is quite ordinary except for an amazingly bright purple door; I love it!

    Go for it! I can’t imagine a prospective buyer not buying a home because of a bright front door.

  6. I love a bright front door, especially when everything else is neutral (that orange door in the photo is perfection). Since my house is a red brick with horrid butter yellow siding and black-teal trim, and we’re unlikely to be painting it for at least another year, I’m opting to paint our front door black for now.

  7. My house was purchased with a bright purple front door painted with stenciled flowers. I’m getting sick of it: it may end up TARDIS blue or insane emerald green in the near future. As I told my husband when i chose brilliant tangerine orange paint for my kitchen: its just paint. (i learned from our neighbors that the previous owner had the kitchen painted bright orange, and the realtor insisted they paint it cream/white… something about that kitchen screamed “i need to be orange” when we were choosing colors… they also painted the green dining room white… i painted it green again without knowing what it had been)

    • I will also be painting my kitchen orange. And our living/dining room is green. My husband chose the green paint, and we realized afterwards that it’s the same color that my grandfather had painted it when he lived here when I was a child. It’s funny how some rooms need to be a particular color!

      And, on topic, we need to paint our doors. The house is pale blue, and now I’m thinking a nice purple would be fabulous. My husband is the one who suggested red for our bedroom and purple and turquoise for the bathrooms, so luckily he’s not afraid to be bright!

  8. I love colored doors. If you decide to sell your house you’ll have to do a lot of fixing anyways so repainting the door might not be a big deal. Or you could go with a unique color that’s still subtle.

  9. We had a bright red door on our house growing up. It looked lovely against the white brick and white siding. It went white with black trim for a while, but not very long. Everyone agreed the red was better.

    IIRC, a door painted red is actually quite traditional for colonial homes.

  10. We bought a house with a muted country red front door and painted it royal purple with black trim (the house has off-white vinyl siding). In my opinion, if the door is paintable, prospective buyers can do whatever they want with it so it’s probably not going to affect them much either way. Most buyers replace the door hardware (knobs and locks) when they move in anyway, so I feel like the door itself is considered expendable, and a bold color would probably do more FOR the house than against it! Paint away!

  11. I came home from work one day to find our front door had been painted fire-engine red. Red front doors started popping up all along our street, and my husband was beyond pleased with his little trend-setting move.

  12. My opinion on painting anything is: It doesn’t take that long to paint something, and paint is inexpensive. In the case of painting a door, this is especially true, so GO FOR IT! If you don’t like it then you can just repaint.

  13. My mum grew up in a very traditional house in the country, but her front door was bright aqua blue! It’s become something of a tradition in our family. My parents house has a blue front door, and I hope someday my house will as well. It just adds something a little more endearing to your home.

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