How to Choose Front Door Color

Featured Pro: Carter Oosterhouse
Category: Home Décor
Time: 4:20


CARTER OOSTERHOUSE: Hey, I’m Carter Oosterhouse, and this is your GMC Trade Secret.

Now, the first thing that people notice about your home is the front door. Your door is the focal point to your house, so it should catch the eye of anyone driving by. And when a guest pulls into your driveway, they should be drawn toward the front door.

Now, when choosing a color for your door, you want to pick a color that contrasts with the rest of your house enough to draw the eye, but still has to work with the surrounding colors and the elements.

So, for instance, here we have a light-colored house. We want to go with probably a darker-colored door. If you have a darker-colored house, you really want to make that door pop with a lighter color. So keep in mind the color of your trim, maybe even the mortar, the landscaping, or even the roof.

You know, one of the things that I recommend is driving around your neighborhood, checking out everybody else’s front door, because they’re going to give you inspiration on what to do or maybe what not to do.

Now, here’s one that I really like. You can see all the muted tones on the house with the stone gray, the black and the white; very simple colors. But then they have that pop of color right at the front door.

Now, this is a really cool one too, because you can see they use three different colors and they’re really able to highlight the detail on the door, but they’re using all the colors that are on the rest of the house.

That’s a really cool one too. I mean, you can see the house – the beautiful yellow, very charming in the brick, and then they make a huge pop and a huge statement with the color of that door.

Now, this is a really nice one too. You can see they basically only have two colors on the house, which is a blue and a gray, but they use the same color on the door that they used on all the trim and the shutters. I really like that blue. Maybe we’ll use that.

A great way to determine which door color would look best with your home is to take a photo of your home and simply lay paint chips over the door to see how it looks. Let me demonstrate.

Now, you can see I took a photo of the front of the house and I simply cut out the front door. Now that we have an opening, I can simply take paint chips that I picked up from the local hardware store right behind the photo. Now, this is a great way to visualize what different colors would look best for your front door. This way you don’t have to actually paint the door with a bunch of different colors.

Here you can simply see how it would look without painting. Here’s a green. I’ve used red, beige and blue. Some of those colors were a little bit too dark. And here’s a little bit of a lighter blue, which is going to look perfect. This is a great trade secret. I love this trick.

All right. So now I’ve prepped the door by basically removing all the hardware. I removed all the dirt and any grime on here. And then I sanded it down basically to remove the finish, so that way the paint can bond to it a whole lot better. Now we’re ready to start painting.

So the first thing we want to start with is using the brush in all of this detail. Here you can see we’re just going to go with nice, easy strokes, up and down. And you don’t want to use too much paint here because you don’t want it to accumulate right in the bottom in these corners. Basically you just use nice, smooth strokes and then just feather it at the end so it ends up being nice and seamless.

Now, if you’re not using a primer, you’re definitely going to need at least two coats. Now, once I finish painting all of these little detailed areas, I’m going to go back and use the roller on the panels and smooth out any imperfections.

This blue dried really nice, and it really pops and draws the eye to the door. Now, remember, it’s only paint, so if you don’t like the color, don’t be afraid to change it as often as you like. Now, if you have a wood finish on your door, there are a wide range of wood stains that can add color and work nicely with other elements of your home.

I’m Carter Oosterhouse, and this is your GMC Trade Secret.