How a new front door transformed a home

Today we will take a deeper look at the individual elements behind one of the standout front doors we have been lucky to visit and photograph in recent years. For a townhouse in East London, the stunning Kingston door above and below was a transformational choice by the homeowner, giving the property a large boost in its kerb appeal, and leading many neighbours and friends to ask the homeowner about the door and where they got it from.

As you can see, the door has a fantastic combination of outstanding, beautiful elements, that work together perfectly, to create a truly wonderful entrance to the property. Below, we will break these down and look at each part in detail.

If you are looking for a new front door for your home, this may help give some tips and advice on what to consider when choosing the right door for your home.

Door Style

One of the first decisions you will need to make when choosing a door, is its style. It will need to suit your property’s architecture and setting. As a traditional London townhouse, our customer here selected our ever popular, ‘Kingston’ style door. This style, of Victorian heritage is a staple of British front doors, and can be found almost anywhere in the country, for its universal adaptability and suitability for multiple property types. Townhouses are an ideal fit for the Kingston door, featuring two glazed upper panels, and two fully timber lower panels, symmetrical in its overall look.

Colour

Front doors give you an opportunity to choose a bold colour, that you wouldn’t necessarily choose for your windows. While windows are more often specified in neutral tones, a front door can be a statement, and bold colours, such as reds, greens, yellow, pink etc are a popular choice among homeowners. Gone are the days of ‘White Gold’ where a PVC front door, in stark white, was almost the only choice available, matching the same finish of the PVC windows.

Knowing that they wanted their new front door in a shade of red, the homeowners considered colours from our own colour palette, such as Hampstead Red and Burgundy. With the Timber Windows range, we provide the opportunity to specify new windows and doors in almost any colour you wish, including the option to dual colour the door, so that internally it can match your colour scheme and style. This includes any RAL, while we can also offer colours complementary to ranges from popular paint brands such as Farrow & Ball, Fired Earth and Little Greene.

With this in mind, and with a desire to choose a unique shade for their home, different to any of the neighbouring properties, the new door was specified in a colour complementary to Farrow & Ball ‘Eating Room Red’ externally. This deep, rich, colour gives the door a vibrant appearance, and yet, is not such a bright red that it risks appearing garish or of aging poorly as tastes continue to evolve. When combined with the elements discussed further below, you can see how this colour specifically works so well, and if the homeowner had opted for a different, or more muted colour choice, the overall door may not have turned out quite as stunning as it has.

Eating Room Red is a colour we have seen grow in popularity among entrance doors, and have photographed a couple professionally now, while on our travels across the country. For townhouse doors such as this, it is an excellent choice, with red as a blanket term, being a popular favourite colour.

Hardware

Given the yellow brick façade, and the choice of Eating Room Red as the door colour, the homeowner’s chose the natural, and most fitting choice when it came to the finish of their door hardware, Aged Brass. The finish of Aged Brass works perfectly against the rich red of the front door, and the general label of describing them as ‘red and yellow’ are two colours that naturally fit together. Aged Brass has an unlacquered finish, giving it a more traditional and rustic appearance, that only further adds to the authentic look of this Victorian style door.

This popular colour pairing can be seen in various contexts in our everyday life, including being the brand colours of worldwide names such as Ferrari, Mastercard and McDonald’s, to name a few. Quite simply, the colour pairing is perfect, and eye catching.

As a townhouse style door, the new front door does not have a traditional handle. Rather the door features an escutcheon, with a locking system activated by closing the door and turning the key, instead of lifting a handle.

A Doctor’s knocker was also specified. This beautiful style of knocker brings an element of class and added character to the doors it is installed on, and is perfect for door styles with a central mullion between the glass panels, like our Kingston door style.

Glass

Glass can be a crucial element in front doors (assuming a style with glass has been specified), that can completely change the look of the overall door, and take it to a new level. It is fair to say, that is exactly what happened with this beautiful front door.

Through working closely with our stained-glass partner in recent years, we can offer homeowners bespoke stained-glass designs, that can be created from scratch, and that are therefore, limited only by your imagination. For this door, the homeowner comments how they took inspiration from front door glass designs from all over London, and used this to create their own design that was similar, authentic and yet unique, to comparable front doors across the capital.

The bespoke stained-glass incorporated here utilises different shapes within its design, creating a beautiful, traditional pattern, using green, blue, orange, red and yellow elements throughout, bringing vibrancy and character. This also carries through to the door’s toplight, where the bespoke stained-glass incorporates the house number, providing a more beautiful solution over a standard door number plaque.

The bespoke stained glass here works perfectly with both the door colour and ironmongery finishes listed above, where these 3 elements all work together and elevate one another. The perfect choice of colours and finishes from the homeowner are all crucial, where if one element were different, the overall look of the door would be entirely different.

New timber front doors for your home

Through the perfect combination of different elements, the owner of this London townhouse has crafted the perfect new front door for her home. The new door is a statement, with the bespoke stained glass, intricate and beautiful in its patterned design, sure to be a talking point for years to come by visitors and neighbours alike.

If you would like to read the full case study, and hear our customer’s testimonial about the new front door, you can find the full case study here.

The door is a testament to the bespoke nature of the Timber Windows service. Our wide selection of colour choices, ironmongery styles and finishes, and glass offerings allow an almost endless combination of styles and finishes. For those not necessarily considering stained glass, yet still with a desire for obscured glass for privacy, we have a selection of etched, patterned and obscure glass designs available to choose from, which when combined with the appropriate hardware and door colour, can be an ideal solution.

We highly recommend picking up a copy of our door portfolio, which has at present, 300 doors that we have visited and photographed over the years. While only a taste of what we can offer, here you can see a great variety of different combinations customers have selected, helping you to narrow down and explore the options available. Our Choices brochure is also an ideal tool, as here we list the fine details, colour, glass and hardware options available with our beautiful range of timber windows and doors.

You can find your local showroom here, while you can follow us on Instagram here for further inspiration on how you can improve your home with our range.