The Best Front Door Colours For Your Home

A front door is the first thing someone will see when approaching a house, with your colour choice affecting both the feel and the attractiveness of your property. If you want to create a welcoming traditional home, a sleek modern home or something else, your choice of uPVC, composite, or painted wooden door will play a huge role.

The Best Colours For Front Doors

The best colour for your front door is ultimately up to you, with some colours looking better in certain environments or building styles. Here are some of the popular front door colours you can choose from, with suggestions for the best paint brands featured later on.

• Black Front Door: For a formal, suave look to your front door, black is a strong colour choice. While those looking for a more vibrant external door are better suited elsewhere, black will never go out of style in period properties.

• Blue Front Door: Blue is probably the other most common classic look for a front door, offering a sense of tranquillity that will blend well with many buildings.

• Dark Blue Front Door: Splitting the difference between black and blue, a dark blue front door will give you a striking and timeless look.

• Bright Yellow Front Door: For those looking to shake things up, a brightly coloured yellow door can make an older property pop, especially when contrasted with plain brick. A yellow front door won’t be for everyone but can be a great way to add personality to your home.

• Red Front Door: Another vibrant option, red has a variety of connotations within the world, but can help to create an eye-catching appearance for your house, setting you apart from others.

• White Front Door: For a bright, refreshing look a white door can be a radiant focal point on a property. While the white look is most famously used for uPVC doors, other materials can be bought or painted to match it.

• Grey Front Door: A grey front door will be a subdued look, helping to blend within your house and street.

It’s important to consider how your new door will look within both your home and the local neighbourhood. If the look of your home clashes wildly with its surroundings you could earn the disapproval of your neighbours and lower the curb appeal of your property.  

Front Door Frame Colours

When looking to paint a front door, there are two standard options for painting the external frame, either using the same colour as the door or painting it white. Both of these will create an attractive entrance to a home.

Colourful Ideas For Your Front Door

Combining a bold colour choice with a unique front door design can create a door that acts as a centrepiece for your home while letting natural light flood through to your internal spaces. Many modern door designs are built with large glazed panels in sharp square or rectangular shapes. Combining this with exciting blue, green, or yellow paint colours can bring a sense of fun to a home.

Another way to brighten up a home is to install a front door with sidelight panels, which can be frosted for privacy, bringing even more light into your hallway. 

Painting can be a novel look for cottage doors, which are often installed varnished. These can look great in muted shades, from creams to matt greens, and can be built with smaller glazed panels in the top half.

Coloured Front Doors

While wooden doors can be easily repainted, a clear bonus when opting for them, other front door materials will be far more difficult to change, meaning it’s important to choose the right colour when purchasing them.

Coloured uPVC Front Doors

While uPVC doors are associated with crisp white colouring, they can be purchased in a full range of colours, allowing you to opt for any of the looks mentioned above. If you have a uPVC door and would like to change the colour, it can be done. However, these front doors are not designed to be painted, so you will need to carefully prepare the surface with a primer and use a paint that is designed for all external surfaces, like Zinsser Allcoat.

Coloured Composite Front Doors

Composite doors are made from a range of materials, including wood, metal, insulation, and plastic. They come in a full range of colours, which will be spray lacquered on during manufacture and baked into the fibreglass outer layer. This means that the colour will not flake off over time and will resist fading. It also means that, like a uPVC door, a composite door is not designed to be repainted, with specialist products required to do so.

Painting Wooden Front Doors

A key benefit of wooden doors is that they can be easily repainted by you, whether you’re looking to refresh the current colour or change it completely. Here is a three-step method for painting your front door.

• Prepare the Surface: You’ll want to sand the surface of your wood, with lighter sanding needed for doors in good condition. You should then wipe the surface clean with white spirit.
• Priming: Primer paint will be needed in most cases (some exterior wood paints will be self-priming). Primer works to create an adhesive surface that the topcoat can bond to. Primer also works to mask the underlying colour of a door, important if switching between different colours, such as from black to yellow. It will be applied by brush as a single coat.
• Painting: Ensure you use a paint that is designed for application on external wood. Most of these will require two coats. Paint with a brush, maintaining the direction of the grain. Leave the first coat to dry for the time indicated on the paint pot before continuing. 

Most of the paint manufacturers in the UK will produce paints intended for external wood, either oil-based or emulsion. You should decide what colour and sheen level you require, with lower sheens offering a more subdued look compared to a reflective gloss.

Some quality front door paints include Ronseal Weatherproof Wood Paint, and Dulux Weathershield (specifically their wood and metal variant). For a glossier option, you could also try Sandtex 10 Year. For more information on painting wood, we have a guide on our website.

A Fantastic Selection of Doors For Sale

Building Materials Nationwide is your one-stop shop for professional building supplies. Within our selection of doors, you’ll find quality external and internal options, alongside frames, ironmongery, and more. All of our products can be delivered across the UK, perfect for a professional or amateur project.

For those working in the industry, our trade accounts will save you time and money. Our dedicated account managers will get you exactly what you need for a project, express delivered to you at a great trade price. If you want to stop calling around or shopping between suppliers, our team can do the legwork for you. Sign up for a trade account today.

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