I always wanted to have a house where you walk into an actual entryway before entering into the main room(s) of the house. That way the entryway is pretty much its own room, and it can be decorated on its own. One of the features I like the least about our house is that the front door is right smack dab inside the front living room.
I’ve tried several things over the years to kind of separate this area from the main seating area of the living room. I’ve tried creating an entryway using furniture placement, using a feature wall, etc. But I still feel like there are limitations. If my front door were inside an actual separate entryway, my paint color options for the interior of the front door would be much wider. But with the front door in the living room, no matter how I try to separate the area and visually create the feel of an entryway, it’s still right there in the living room.
Anyway, I have so few things left to do in the living room before I consider the room finished, and one of them is painting the inside of the front door. It has looked like this — just a plain primed door — since the day it was installed.
But every time I think, “Today’s the day I’m going to paint the front door,” I get bogged down with a color decision.
I want so badly to paint the front door a color other than white. White just seems so boring to me. But since this door is right there in the living room, I just don’t know if I can make any other color work. And that’s very disappointing to me.
I can hear some of you now saying, “Kristi, not everything in a room has to be a feature!” And I do know that. I really do. But I also don’t want to miss an opportunity if I can make it work without it taking away from the rest of the room.
After mulling over every possible option, I really only see three possibilities here — pink, dark teal, and white.
If I paint it pink, of course I would take my curtain fabric and have it matched exactly. I did this quick mock-up to give an idea of what it would look like. It’s not perfect, because an actual painted door wouldn’t appear as a solid mass of pink. A real painted door would have highlights and shadows from the lighting. But this is as good as I can get it using my photo editing program.
The only pink items in the living room are the curtains, so I feel like this might almost distract from my pretty pink curtains. And while I love the idea of a pink front door, I don’t love the idea of a front door stealing attention from my pink curtains. I’m just not sure if that would happen, though. Maybe it would be a beautiful continuation of the color onto the door.
The only other color option I can see would be the dark teal. This would be the same teal that’s on the entryway wall (which you can see to the right of the door). It’s also on the fireplace, which is on the wall directly opposite the entryway wall. And it’s also on the music room bookcases, which are directly opposite the front door wall.
For reference, here’s the fireplace wall, directly opposite the dark teal entryway wall.
And here’s the entryway wall in relation to the music room bookcases. Those bookcases are directly ahead when you step through the front door.
And also, all of my interior doors in this section of the house (i.e., not including my studio) are dark teal. So what do you think? Could that work?
Or, should I stick with white. Plain, boring white, and let the door kind of fade into the background while letting everything else stand out?
