Shut the Front Door!

Ever since we moved into the new house, I’ve had mixed feelings on our front door. Our old house had a red front door, which always seemed really warm and inviting to me.

(You can see it peeking out behind that Japanese Maple tree in the pic above.) It was so charming, and really made the house feel special. So you can see my mixed feelings when I moved to the new house, and was greeted with this:

Yup. A super shiny, black front door. The patio is already pretty dark, so this door was not doing anything to help the ambiance.

I was pretty creeped out by the black front door. I believe other people were too, a suspicion that was confirmed on Halloween last year as I sat home alone in my Princess Leia costume, waiting for trick-or-treaters and got hardly any. Okay, it’s not like the front door forced me to let my inner Liz Lemon out, but it still is too creepy!

I was left with so many questions: Why didn’t I like the black front door? Was it giving me some sort of subliminal message through color? What would be a better option? Then I did what I do best. I googled it.

Immediately I found some really awesome articles about historical meanings of different door colors, feng shui guidelines, and more awesome info. Turns out red historically means a place for travelers to stay! Cool, except I don’t want any Civil War re-enactors to come to my front door hoping for lodging and a place to stable their filly.

I tried to consider too what I had seen done a lot recently (Reds, yellows), and what might look best with the house. Trying to stay true to the homes mid-century ranch history, I knew I wanted something bright and funky. Then I found these pictures on Remodelista.

Some might say I was green with envy. I would never say that though, because that would be a terrible pun.

According to this article, a green front door can represent connection to nature (awesome), safety (love it), and prosperity (sold!).

While we were in the midst of Ultimate Paintathon of 2012, we took about half an hour and knocked this bad boy out. I bought a small can of Limeade paint from Benjamin Moore in a satin finish. Boy, does it look awesome.

“Oh Hi! I hope you like the green front door. I can’t see it, because I’m colorblind.” – Skipper

I love how the green looks against the super soothing greige we picked in the living room. I took these photos mid-afternoon, so you can see how the door is really bright against the darker patio. It livens up the front of the house a TON, and I know it’s probably a little premature, but I bet we’ll be getting way more trick-or-treaters this year.

What is your fantasy front door? Purple? Royal blue? Bedazzled? Leave a picture in the comments of your fave!