5 Stunning Dark Front Door Colours to Inspire You to Go Bold

You don’t need to go bright and colourful to be bold. In fact, if brighter tones aren’t your style, why not consider a more sophisticated statement with classic blacks, navy blues, greys, or rich and natural wood tones? It’s the perfect solution if you’re looking to create a look that offers a little more moodiness and charm, and not to mention, a richly toned dark hue painted on your home’s front door makes for a very polished and classy look.

To help you modernise your facade with a stylish new bespoke front door colour, we thought we’d compile 5 of our favourite colours for creating a striking and timeless design for your home. It’s proof that you don’t need to go bright to go bold, or to give your home an entirely new look.

Black

Think about that little black dress, but instead, flaunt it on your home’s exterior. There is not a single colour combination more versatile than a classic polished black. This beautiful high-impact basic of a colour works great with almost any exterior materials, whether it’s coupled with white brick, red brick, wood tones, panels and more. We just love how it creates a dramatic curb appeal, drawing eyes in as they pass by.

Dark Grey

You can’t go wrong with grey, and especially a darker and deeper grey tone, because it creates such a sophisticated and timeless look. It’s also a versatile choice as it suits more traditional and period properties as well as modern designs – and it’s also an all-year-round favourite, creating wonderful winter vibes later in the year, while beautifully complemented with lights and greenery throughout the summer.

Olive Green

A darker green tone like olive green is a saviour of style and class when it comes to a home’s exterior, preventing it from fading away into the background. Allow it to pop with white trims and other elements to complement to complete the aesthetic – and use these tricks to your advantage throughout both summer and winter months.

Maroon

An all-round win-win, a beautiful maroon paint makes for a flashy colour without the overwhelming brightness of other red tones. When surrounded by a light trim colour and complementing window frames and accents, a maroon door will create a distinguishing look to the exterior of your home, and drum up some serious curb appeal.

Navy

A crowd-favourite, navy blue always makes a striking addition to the front exterior of your home. A lovely muted navy immediately draws eyes to that delicate hue of colour, without creating too much of a ‘serious’ look. Not to mention, it works well with endless exterior designs and materials.

Choosing the right door colour can make all the difference, transforming a basic home exterior to a striking entranceway and focal point. Play around with deep and rich dark-coloured tones, and add a pop of colour with the symmetrical placement of planters, lighting, and hardware to give your home a balanced, eye-catching appeal.

Complementing Traditional Period Door Features Part 2 – Our Services

If you live in a period home, it’s likely that you flaunt a traditional period front door to match – and there’s no better way to maintain and respect the elegance of your home’s architectural charm. If your period front door is an original, chances are it isn’t as secure as doors you see around the block today.

In part two, we’ll look at how you can upgrade your existing door with some modern-day features and still keep the authentic character within your home.

Choosing the Perfect Door Colour

There’s no limit to the colour possibilities available to us today, so when it comes to painting your new period door, you might find yourself overwhelmed by choice. However, it’s always a good idea to revert to tradition. Historically, black and red were popular choices for Georgian front doors, while grey is more common for more contemporary front doors.

It’s important to decide on a paint colour that perfectly suits both your home and your own personal taste. Consider the exterior of your home and the colours you want to highlight and enhance. Is it the tiling on the porch, or the colourful stained glass panels? Maybe you want to turn the focus to some of the greenery around your Edwardian home, in which case, elegant matt shades could be appropriate such as blacks, navy blues or greys.

Our team of designers can aid in choosing the right colour for your door, showcasing our range of shades and palettes. Then, during the construction of your door, our professional craftsmen will paint the perfect seamless coating, making for long-lasting protection from the elements as well as a true enhancement of style.

Deciding on Door Furniture

If you’ve figured out the style and the colour of your new front-door-to-be, you’ll also want to consider new door furniture, including handles, letterboxes, knockers, door numbers and more. Our expert designers are available to help and advise as to what style would best suit your new period front door. Modern doors look great with polished chrome or nickel accessories, whereas Georgian properties look an absolute masterpiece with burnished or polished brass, especially with more intricate detailing.

Considering Glazing

From Georgian homes to the 1930s, to even contemporary doors produced today, bespoke doors often boast some form of glazing, whether it’s in the door itself or from a fanlight/sidelight. Thinking back over a hundred years, we must remember that electric lighting wasn’t prevalent in homes until the 20th century, so natural daylight was an absolute must for dark hallways and corridors.

With our bespoke services, you can choose from a range of beautifully stained glass designs, whether you’re looking for simple and elegant, or something more authentic and intricate. When it comes to incorporating modern features, our team can advise on options for strengthened and frosted glass that enhances both security and privacy for your home, as well as enhancing existing characteristics like surrounding windows, shapes and other detailing.

Get in touch to discuss a free no-obligation visit at a time that’s convenient for you. You’ll be able to see first-hand the many design options available, providing you with plenty of design possibilities to inspire your front door project.

 

5 Reasons Why We Use Accoya Wood for Front Doors

When it comes to selecting the kind of wood for your front door, you need to get the best material. If you’re looking for something high-performance that also proves to be an environment friendly choice, then Accoya wood is what you need.

Accoya wood is acetylated and originates from Radiata Pine. The Radiata is harvested and undergoes an acetylation process which modifies the pine to its very core. Moreover, it’s an environment friendly process.

Moreover, Accoya is an incredibly diverse and beautiful piece of wood. Its quality surpasses any hardwood, while its beauty is sure to turn heads towards your front door. Furthermore, Accoya wood’s durability makes it a highly in-demand material for doors, windows, and objects that have to stick around for long. It does not split, warp, twist, or bow – making it a good material for decking. Furthermore, it is also ideal for use in cladding and siding due to its performance and sustainability, along with its natural beauty.

We at Bespoke Front Doors use Accoya Wood as our choice material for making front doors. Here’s why:

Corrosiveness

Accoya is used both internally and externally in cases that have to deal with dampness. Since water corrodes various metals and causes material deterioration, Accoya wood has to be used along with high-quality brass fixings or stainless steel to limit corrosion and maximize durability. Hence, you need to make sure that you are selecting the right material to be used with Accoya wood.

Weight

Accoya is an exceptionally lightweight material. This particular feature makes it ideal for usage in structures along with external applications such as windows and doors. The average weight of Accoya wood stands at 512kg/m³.

Durability

This particular property of Accoya wood is what sets it apart from all other tropical hardwood front door options. The acetylation process does have a part to play here as it removes the wood’s ability to absorb water, making it more durable. Moreover, the wood also becomes indigestive and far more stable. The good thing about acetylation is the fact that it utilizes no toxic or harmful chemicals, making it an environment friendly process. The process involves diluted vinegar or acetic acid to alter the timber, both safe to use materials.

Certification

Accoya wood is made with Radiata Pine as the raw material. That particular tree usually grows in New Zealand. Radiata Pine grows quite quickly and is evergreen – making it accessible and safe to use all around the year. Hence, fresh timber is always ready at hand. This makes Accoya favourable to most hardwoods which are only available at a certain time of the year. Bespoke Front Doors make sure that all of our Accoya wood comes from legally harvested timber.

Beauty and Environment-Friendliness

Accoya wood possesses a natural beauty that makes it great to use for siding, windows, and, especially, Victorian front doors. Furthermore, Accoya wood is a sustainable option that reduces the usage of hardwood resources while also being more carbon efficient. It’s an environment friendly solution that offers fantastic performance.

 

Some Simple Ways to Protect Your Front Door from Extreme Weathers

The exterior of your house has to weather everything that nature has to throw at it. Although the walls and roof have ample protection because of how they are built, but the wooden front door usually bears the worst as it does not have enough protection.

You might have heard multiple pieces of advice on how to protect your London front door from weather and nature, with expensive paints and wood treatments being something that’s oft mentioned. However, rather than going for these treatments that can put a lot of weight on your wallet, you can choose some more standard methods of protecting your front door.

Some ways of providing ample protection to your front door extreme weather include:

Installing an porch in Front of the Door

An porch is one of the prettiest thing to add your house and also very effective. The most obvious positive than an porch brings is obvious: it provides shade. The overhangs protects everything beneath it from the sunlight and offers you a great place to lounge around.

However, it’s not for your benefit that an porch should be installed. After all, it’s not every day that you would want to lounge outside your front door. The real beneficiary from a door porch is your Victorian front door, which gets protected from the sunlight.

As you may know, sunlight is quite harmful for a front door. It discolours the paint and damages it. When the layer of paint is damaged, the wood beneath it is exposed as well and ends up being more prone to UV rays and rain.

An porch provides shade to your front door as well, from both sunlight and rain. It’s an effective method of providing your front door the protection it needs to fight both. With an porch, you can keep your front door healthy for a long period of time.

A Storm Door

There are more than ways of providing your front door with extra protection. Rather coat it with numerous layers of paint or treatments, you can very well just get another door that sits right in front. A storm door offers you just that.

With a storm door you can keep your bespoke front door from facing the worst that extreme weather has to offer it. Winds, sunlight, and rain, the storm door takes it all. Although it doesn’t provide complete protection from them, the storm door does end up giving you a fair bit of protection.

Choose a Lighter Colour

Heat absorbed from the sunlight can make a wooden or steal door expand. Expansion has a major effect on the quality of the wood and people often recommend expensive treatments to keep the wood healthy. However, instead of that you can just modify the paint on your door to something that does not absorb as much heat. When you paint your door, go for a lighter colour as they absorb less heat and reflect more of the sunlight that comes their way.

Styling Your Front Door for Winter: A Handy Guide

The mist and the mystery of winter has approached our London front doors, and it’s time we give in to the aesthetic of it all! Styling your front door for the winter is a great way to switch up the look of your house, and perhaps make up for the gloom that winter nights are going to ensue.

There are many ways to style your Victorian front door for the winter. Festive, elegant and vibrant – you can do your decor is so many different ways! In this article, we break down our top 3 picks for winter front door styling: Organic Modern, Winter Solstice, and Flora & Botanical

Organic Modern

What You’ll Need: A few simple black ornaments to serve as modern and clean alternatives to shiny holiday baubles, a single gold ribbon, cedar branches, seeded eucalyptus (which have preferably been painted gold), and Banksia flowers.

Nature brings in different themes from several parts of itself.  The ivory that emanates from  Banksia flowers, and the beautiful tone of the antlers can both combine to form a natural color tone that is aesthetically pleasing and gorgeous to look at.

Give your period front door the look of a wrapped gift and attach a ribbon (preferably birch-tree-patterned) to the door to imitate the verticality of the windows. All of this will contribute a decidedly neutral tone to your overall design.

Tip For Designing: Keep it as simple as possible, and follow the lines. Take your sense of aesthetic door’s vertical lines, and play off the neutral color theme driven by the antlers.

Winter Solstice

What You’ll Need: black ornaments as alternate to shiny holiday baubles, deer antlers, seeded eucalyptus (sprayed gold), Banksia flowers, cedar branches and a single gold ribbon.

The winter solstice look is all about bringing out the mythical aspect of nature. The mica (a shiny mineral) and crystals offer a natural outlook on the sparkle and reflections you’ll get from classic ornaments. Use the seasonal celebration as an inspiration for this earthy design!

Design Tip: Although a trendy and simple air plant can sufficiently serve as the focal point of  your arrangement. You can add another smaller air plant for asymmetry as well as for a visual surprise.

Flora & Botanical

What You’ll Need: A single silver ornament, a few rooster feathers, birch branches, sugar pine cones, snowberry, red Aronia berries, Flat cedar branches and magnolia tips.

This is a modern take on traditional holiday decor for your home’s front door. There’s one thing that’s being accentuated here – pinecones. This look brings out a quintessential Christmas vibe. But the direction can also take a modern twist. Moreover, the larger your sugar pine cones – the better the look will come out.

Design Tip: For this year, switch the traditional look up a little and use different types of ribbons. Ditch the conventional velvet ribbon and weave the fresher ones through the wreaths with wire. WIth this out-of-the-box approach, only traditional gold’s, greens and reds will feel in place.

How to make your front door festive

With Christmas just around the corner, the chances are that you’ve already started planning for the season, whether that be through Black Friday Sales, sending out invitations for Christmas Dinner or, heaven forbid, putting up your Christmas decorations before December. One part of our homes that’s overlooked during the festive season are the London doors, and so below,we’ve put together a few ways you can make your front door as festive as can be.

Make a holly wreath

Whether you have a Victorian front door, period front door or something more contemporary, you just cannot beat a holly wreath over Christmas. Whether you make your own with leaves and berries, or you buy one from the local supermarket or garden centre, there are lots of ways that you can make your home stand out from the rest with a stunning wreath display.

Add some lights to your holly to make it sparkle after dark, or buy three in varying sizes and position them in the shape of a snowman on your door to keep your children entertained. If you don’t want to nail your wreath to your front door, then suspend it from the top of your door with some ribbon, which you can tie to the inside of your entrance door out of sight.

 

Add a ‘Santa Stop Here’ sign

Keep the magic of Christmas alive by installing a ‘Santa Stop Here’ sign to your front door. It is a fun and simple way to make your home look festive and remind St. Nick to stop at your house. What’s more, you can get the kids involved and let them create their own signs with a piece of wood and some paint. It’s great for those who don’t have a front garden, too.

 

Buy a Christmas tree

 

Finally, if you want to push the boat out and celebrate Christmas in style, then buy a couple of small Christmas trees to place at your porch. Decorate them with some fairy lights, and you’ll create the ultimate Christmas welcome when your friends and family arrive.

Whether you’re in need of a lock, letter plate or a new Period front door, you can depend on the London door experts at Bespoke Front Door. Get in touch today and buy your brand new front door.

Autumn Sale!

 

The best reason to transform your home!

10% discount on all our front doors

Friday 5th October until Saturday 1st December

Click here to make an appointment today

 

Have your new period front door installed in time for Christmas with no deposit to pay!

 

 Most beautiful London front doors also available to buy online!

 

SOLID WOODEN DOORS VS. Accoya Doors: WHAT’S BETTER FOR YOUR HOUSE?

If you’re looking for the most efficient, aesthetically pleasing and durable options for your front door – you might just be faced with the dilemma of choosing between accoya  doors or solid wood doors. Fact is, there are pros and cons to both choices – and the ultimate decision rests within your judgement. A wooden door adds a timeless and bold statement to your house’s entryway. The warmth that wood offers has a historic charm to it. Regardless of whether you’re just planning to increase your house’s curb appeal or ultimately intend to sell your house or not – wood is definitely a good first impression for anyone walking through your entryway.  Being aware of the perks of solid front doors and Accoya front doors will make it easy for you to make the ultimate choice. In this article, we explore both these options in detail and break down for you which material is better for your front door!

Before we dive into each of these choices, however, do keep in mind that the species of the wood you’re using is equally important as everything else. Wooden doors come in a wide range of shapes and architectural styles. Solid wood doors have many types such as pain grade, mahogany, maple, walnut, oak, cherry, alder, Douglas fir, etc. Each type has its own benefits. Mahogany offers better resistance to weathering and sunlight, but also ends up costing more. Accoya wood, on the other hand, offers better thermal insulation properties as compared to commonly used softwood and hardwood species

Solid Wood Doors

Solid wood adds beauty and warmth to any house. The good thing about solid wood doors is that you can choose from London door that pre-hung and hence easy to install. Wood doors have perks over steel door or fiberglass. They’re more warm, have more natural beauty and add richness to your entryway. However, they’re also more costly than steel or fibreglass – and also more prone to weathering and rotting IF not maintained consistently. Solid wood doors are the ideal option for homeowners to add a touch of luxury to their house and hence increase their curb appeal. Due to the exceptional beauty, strength and weight of solid wood doors – they have a lot more security, safety and design appeal to offer over steel or fiberglass doors.

Accoya Wood Doors

Homeowners looking to buy Victorian front doors and windows often assume that there will be a high level of upkeep and maintenance needed to make sure to maintain their condition. They don’t realize, however, that there’s another species of wooden doors that doesn’t require as much maintenance.

Accoya wood is the ideal material for external period front doors as well as wooden window frames and wooden window shutters. Accoya wood provides more durability and happens to be more dimensionally stable. It has a better coatings performance that lasts for double the time. Accoya wood saves you money, time and hassle. Although the ultimate choice between solid wood doors and Accoya wood doors rests in your hand – our verdict, is that Accoya is a better choice overall

FRONT DOORS WITH FASCINATING HISTORY BEHIND THEM

 

What’s in a door? Well, when it comes to London, quite a lot! If you’ve ever had the privilege of getting your way around London, you might have noticed that the doors in this city are quite the specialty. But it’s not just the doors and their aesthetic – but also their background and history that is fascinating. Be it a color pop front door of a posh Kensington townhouse or a classic Victorian Front Door you find in the suburbs – the doors in London do have a special history that’s worth analyzing. Most tourists around London are enticed by the marvelous doors they so often come across. In this article, we dissect just these special door and the history behind them, covering many different types of period front doors in London:

THE OLDEST

This shadowy door is situated next to the Chapter House, in Westminster Abbey. It has a sign next to it that indicates it’s the oldest door in all of England!

How old, you may be wondering? Well, the door was put through tree age dating (dendrochronological) recently, and it was found that the door dates as far back as 1043! So, almost a 1000 years old! They also found traces of skin clung to the material of the door – but don’t worry, it wasn’t human skin. It was animal hide.

THE MOST INSTAGRAMMED

This is the door that receives the attention of most tourists passing by – and more than often gets posted on the Internet! The door is located in the 18th Century streets in Spitalfields, which are already a tourist destination. In the 17th century, this whole area is said to have been home to French Huguenots. Today, the door is the entrance to Eleven and a Half – an art dealership that specializes in artists from West Cornwall.

An early Georgian front door

THE SLIMMEST

This marvelously slim door was constructed in 1904 as a bespoke tall door that enabled painters to manoeuvre their large painted backdrops to various West End theatres and out of the studio. It happens to be located in St Giles, and is a part of the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms.

Elms Lesters Painting Rooms continue to go strong today and is a family-run, independent gallery that has chosen to embrace the legacy of this exceptional door!

THE MOST ICONIC

Since we happen to be writing about London doors – it’d be criminal to miss one specific door that happens to located in 10 Downing Street. This is one of the most iconic, but also the most guarded front door in all of London.

The door has been the entrance to the official residence of the Prime Minister since 1735. It’s not an easy door to have a vision of or photograph, however, for security purposes. Luckily, the Government website does allow you to have a 360 tour of the whole house! You could also try going to the ‘fake Downing Street’ that’s located only a few minutes away.

Twenties And Thirties Front Doors

With more than 4 million new houses constructed within these 29 years, the Twenties And Thirties experienced a significant boom in house building and we’re customized to fit the needs of the changing new family. House owners in this era wanted to have their own houses – and this lead to suburban developments all over the country. These houses and their period front doors took a significant amount influences from the preceding Art & Crafts movement, but came with their own little twinge.

Douglas Fir happened to be the most common choice of timber for making external or internal doors during this era. Being amongst the most well known wood species in the world, Douglas fir was a great choice for 1930’s front doors and offered useful qualities when it came to rot, resilience, straight close knit grain and structural strength.

Two distinct styles came about in this era. One was the more traditional choice that had evolved from the earlier Arts & Crafts period of decoration and romance. The other approach was to reject all kinds of ornation and detail and instead opt for a simple and clean cut design. Cottage Style Homes and Mark Tudor Homes were the houses most often seen in suburban developments in this era. Inevitably, the doors adopted to these houses were also considered in their features. Moreover, the houses in this era happened to consist of small living spaces and had many external differences with each other in terms of timbering and porches etc.

These doors often consisted of a top single panel over three panels on the bottom. Yellow Pine Doors made in this period were often so to make them look much more lighter after being stripped.

These doors did not fall out of sync with the design of the overall house. They were classic in style and were popular with all kinds of people – be they owners of a period house or the owners of modern houses. The Quality and style of the Twenties And Thirties doors was such that it was a preferred choice for everyone!

Property from the 1930’s continues to fascinate artists, historians and architects all over the world with their very style, class and contemporary aesthetic. The Twenties And Thirties London doors continue to be very popular even to this day and are the preferred choice of many homeowners in the UK. The options for such doors today range from anything like Georgian Internal doors, Oak Doors, Regency Style and more modern Vintage Orders.

If you’re looking to have some 20s and 30s style inspired front doors installed in your house, Bespoke Front Door and the ideal style, design and make for you.

Bespoke Front Door