Front and Center Color: When to Paint Your Door Orange

Orange is a high-energy color that hollers, “Look at me!” — a fantastic choice for an entry to a home. Nonetheless, it’s not a simple colour. Vibrant orange is intense and has to be paired with much more soothing, neutral hues to avoid seeming too active and garish. Lighter, mellower oranges can read as too light hearted and peachy, which makes them tricky to utilize too.

Luckily abounds with excellent examples of crimson front doors done successfully. Check out seven of these, together with sample colour palettes to assist you fired up to get an orange front door.

NIMMO American Studio For Progressive Architecture

1. Orange Door With Clean Architecture

we are predisposed to see bold colours on contemporary houses more frequently than on traditional ones because the former, with its clean lines and minimal adornment, makes for a terrific blank canvas that can support vibrant hues. Busier styles of architecture is able to start to appear circus-y if bright colours are overused.

Jennifer Ott Design

Example palette: Clockwise from top left (all from Glidden Paint): Orange Marmalade GLO04, Toasted White GLC18 and Seal Grey GLN46.

Ana Williamson Architect

2. Glass and Orange-Framed Door

If your front door has lites (glass panels), painting the framework a vibrant hue gives you a hit of colour while still letting your house’s entrance to stand out well.

Jennifer Ott Design

Example palette: Clockwise from top left (all from Sherwin-Williams): Invigorate SW6886, Sensible Hue SW6198 and Reliable White SW6091.

Jesse Im/bugonmyleaf

3. Vibrant Orange Door With a Soothing Gray Exterior

This eye-popping shade of orange is not for the shy. But it works here because the siding and the trim are cool, soothing neutrals that support rather than compete with the bold color.

Jennifer Ott Design

Example palette: Clockwise from top left (all from Valspar): Trolley AR1605, Ultra White 7006-24 and Seafoam Storm 5002-1C.

The Decor Fix

4. Neutral Orange and Conventional Architecture

Those looking for a subtler shade of crimson or to complement more traditional architecture might wish to think about an orange like the one shown here. This colour is much more tonal since it includes some taupe in it (white, black and brown), which makes it read as more of a neutral. If you chose the bold orange color in the previous case and added just whitened, it might turn orange. Lighter hues need the addition of black or brown to keep them from looking like a colour better suited to a nursery.

Jennifer Ott Design

Example palette: Clockwise from top left (all from Pittsburgh Paint): Carrot Cake 223-5, Silver Feather 530-1 and Fog 517-3.

Cushman Design Group

5. Orange Door Having a Wonderful Gray Exterior

This is one of my preferred outdoor colour palettes on one of my favourite styles of architecture. The trendy blue-gray siding with the true orange door is stunning. Orange and blue are opposite each other on the colour wheel, so they offer the most contrast. The orange leaves the blue appear brighter and bluer and vice versa. A fantastic tip when working with contrasting colours would be to pick a more vibrant shade of one of the hues (the crimson in this instance) while retaining the other colour (the blue-gray here) subtler and more neutral. This produces an eye-catching yet tasteful palette.

Jennifer Ott Design

Example palette: Clockwise from top left (all from Mythic Paint): Ember’s Glow 107-6, Mason Gray 134-5 and Monarch Pass 135-5.

Stephenson Design Collective

6. Orange Door Having a Taupe Exterior

So far we have seen lots of crimson and grey combinations, but orange is a hot colour and so works well with other hot colours. Using a warmer hue in an exterior will even make the orange appear less bold and intense, to get a more toned-down entrance than in the previous example.

Jennifer Ott Design

Example palette: Clockwise from top left (all from Benjamin Moore): Calypso Orange 2015-30, Gargoyle 1546 and Stone Hearth 984.

MGS Architecture

7. Orange Door With Wood Siding

Natural wood siding of the coloration tends to see as orange, so an orange door is the perfect extension of that. This front door still stands outside, but there’s less contrast than if the siding were a cooler colour.

Jennifer Ott Design

Example palette: Clockwise from top left (all from Pratt and Lambert): Midnight Sun 8-13, Trout 33-13 and Mirage Gray 28-31.

Remember that the colours you see on your monitor do not exactly match what comes from the paint can, so always get samples and test the colours in the planned space to be sure you are delighted with the result.

Tell us What do you think about orange on a front door?

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