Portland Fixer Upper: Inspirations for Front Door Colors

Today, we are back to the Portland Fixer – the project I’m doing with my brother that we are selling in July – more on that here. To say we are behind on blogging about this house is obviously an understatement – those posts are in the process of being prepared (WE’RE WORKING AS FAST AS WE CAN, TYPING/DESIGN FURIOUSLY) and we are adding to our team daily to get this content out. We’re all basically panting in the office to get it all done. But today’s easy task is for you to weigh in on the color of the front door.

The house is Oyster White SW 7637 by Sherwin–Williams which is a lovely warm white. The rest of the elements are below so you can get a sense for what’s happening up front:

We’ve got white, gray, black, gold and green in the plants. The doors are paint or stain ready (the mudroom door is from Rejuvenation, the other two to match are through Medallion). They have windows in them for light and pair pretty beautifully with our brass lantern sconces. The floor tile is Clé herringbone and it’s RIDICULOUS. So much texture and yet so classic. More on that later.

While all of that looks very lovely together, it seems to me that we need some color. We have a ton of plants (thanks to Kate at Monrovia, I love you deeply) but is green, white, black, gray and gold enough? Maybe.

At home in Los Angeles, I have a bright red door and it brings me daily happiness. Plus as you can see, the front door is under a large overhang so anything too neutral seems like a missed opportunity to do something fun and colorful. Anything too dark will just fade away into the shadow. Where’s the fun in that?

Here are some inspiration images that we are loving. First up – not shockingly, the blue family. I love some light, some medium and some dark…although leaning towards the powdery tones.

It’s hard for me to resist a brighter blue like the above because it just gives me that shock of color that I love. However, I am not the one buying this house. We need to choose the color that has the widest appeal. Does everyone universally love this color? I DON’T KNOW.

We do know that most people love gray…

But in a city that already has a lot of gray, we’ve been warned not to bring gray too heavily into the color scheme. Gray can feel sad and under that overhang, I don’t think it’s the best idea.

We considered a sage-y green, like the below:

But all the plants are already green, so it would be nice to bring in another layer of color…

We always have the option of staining the wood door and keeping it natural.

The color palette could certainly use some warmth, and nothing does that quite like wood does.

Of course, a red door brings an instant jolt of happiness to the curb appeal (I can attest from my own house). But does everyone like red as much as I do on the front door of a house?

Remember, this is not my house. I have no idea who is going to buy this house. The color of the front door needs to hit the emotions of so many people.

What is your gut? Ours right now is a dark powder blue, otherwise known as a medium toned blue – not royal but not teal. Just a rich powder, but if you all said red I CAN GO RED.

What do you think? We superimposed some hues we’re hemming and hawing over onto a real photo of the front exterior taken yesterday to get a sense for what some of the inspiration colors in the images throughout the post would look like on the front facade. The idea is that the same color would go on the double entry doors as on the mudroom Dutch door. What do you guys think? Is blue universal enough (and pops enough on the house) that we go that route, or keep things neutral with black (to match the window frames) or a stained wood (hard to say no to that warmth). Okay…GO!

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