Sunday, January 30, 2011

Blue is the New Red

Blue is the new red, at least when it comes to front doors. Don't get me wrong, a red door can still have a great "pop" factor, but it's been over done in the past 10 or so years. So out with the old and in with the blue. We painted our door a few months ago, and that's how we became "the house with the blue door". I love telling people that have never been here before, "We're the house with the blue door." There are no other blue doors on our block, and it's just so fun to say. Anyway, here's how we got to the place of being "The House with the Blue Door:

First, you need to know that we have a green living room. I love the saturated color on the walls, and will hopefully get to a post about how that happened sometime later, but when thinking about the green walls and my newly painted door, red just sounded way too Christmasy. So we (we being my husband, Jake, and myself) thought to ourselves, "What other color could we paint the door?" And the answer was blue! Blue and green look fun together, they don't look like a worldwide holiday invaded your house and refused to leave once January hit. So off we set to find the perfect blue for our sad little door. Here's what our door looked like before:

Sad, right? The weird shading at the bottom is because the old beat up screen door that had been on it (which we have since replaced) blocked the sunlight from fading the bottom of the door, but the rest the sun had not been so good to. Makes you wonder about sun damage to your skin a little more huh? Anyway, that door was not exactly the most attractive, but it did it's job and we saw no reason to replace it, we like to work within our means and with what we have, so the alternative to a replacement was a good old fashioned painting. So without further ado, here's the amazing (in my opinion at least) after:


Doesn't it look so much better?! I love that it's so bright and cheery but not too overpowering. Please excuse the darker shading at the top, that's just a shadow from the roof of the porch, the bottom half is the door's truest color. 

So, how did we come up with our wonderful door color? We did what we always like to do when painting pretty much anything, we got a truckload of samples in different shades of blue, and taped them all up to the door to see what it would look like in its natural habitat. We made sure to check them out at different times of day too, so that we don't pick something that looks great in the morning light, but then fades with the sun at the end of the day. After eliminating all the other competition, this blue won out and took home the erm...blue ribbon. So that's how we became "The House with the Blue Door".

What about you guys? Any door painters out there? Or did you already know that blue was the new red and set the trend of yellow being the new blue?