Keeping Up With The Jones – First Impressions
The front door of your home is the first actual physical contact that people will have with it – touching the door to knock on its wood or glass, picking up the knocker or touching the doorbell. So it makes sense that your front door forms an enormous part of the first impression that people have of your home. Many of you are renovating to sell, not only to live in, and a well-presented front door is said by ’some’ agents to add ‘up to’ 10% to the value of a property! We aren’t sure if you’ll be able to charge an extra twenty thousand on top of the price of your house just for replacing, repainting or re-furnishing the front door, but we do know that it can make people feel a lot more welcome, can change the feel of the rest of the house … and may add just a teensy bit of value for you!
The paint, letterbox and door knob are touted as the main areas to look at in your front door. The colour that you paint your door will obviously be a major consideration – a survey has revealed that blue is seen as the most appealing colour for a front door. However, there are a couple of facts that you would do well to remember in conjunction with those survey results! One is the number of blue front doors you have seen in your lifetime … yes, I thought so! Another is the fact that blue, or any other colour you consider appealing (or lucky) for a front door may not work so well with the colours that the rest of the house is painted. Polished wood is always a favourite of mine (mainly because it is one of the best ways to highlight the lovely textures and colours in your brass, nickel, copper or bronze door furniture!), and natural colours that mimic wood are another old classic, like beige, tan, deep brown or even black, depending on the surroundings.
You can choose the colour of your front door based on the colour wheel – you might have seen this in science class, way back when you wore your hair in pigtails or a bowl-cut (!), or in graphic design manuals or sites. Basically it shows the relationships of colours to each other – orange is in between yellow and red, red fades into purple and then blue, and blue goes from green to yellow, all within a circle. You should choose either colours that are directly next to each other, or directly opposite each other on the colour wheel, as a rough guide. If you are a bit more experienced at putting colours together, you could go for themes which incorporate colours from triangular points on the wheel, or ‘complementary’ themes, where you incorporate both a close and an opposite colour in your scheme.
One trick that we have learned is that when painting your front door, to achieve the best possible finish you have to do it the hard way (just like everything in life, really ;-)). Use white spirit to thin out the paint that you use, and apply several coats, rather than putting on only two or three thick coats of paint.
As for the letterbox and door knob, we have hundreds of pages of advice on choosing the perfect one for your home … all contained in the product titles and descriptions of the main part of the site! Look for letter boxes and letter plates under the door furniture reproductions and originals sections, and also consider using a knocker rather than a bell, especially if you have a period style home. There are some beautiful and fascinating knockers available, as they offer so much more of a chance to personalise and individualise than lever handles and knobs, which must be a lot more functional.
One of the nicest things about choosing your front door furniture is that it doesn’t have to match the rest of the house – you can create completely different themes inside and out, and still maintain a beautiful and striking style. So check out the range, and have fun doing it!
Photo credits: The Doors by Philip McAllister
2 Responses to “Keeping Up With The Jones – First Impressions”
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The black door at the Pm’s house looks pretty spiffy. Feng Shui says red, but I like black. Sort of like the entrance to Hades … Mwa hah hah hah haaaaaa…!
I love the pale green colour of the front door of your keeping up with the Jones article. Can you tell me what the colour is?