There are so many things that you can do to update a front door without having to completely replace it! Here’s what we did with ours!
Don’t get me wrong. I love new exterior doors. They can be pricey, but they can definitely be a worthwhile investment in many cases. It can also be a huge waste to replace front door though, if it’s in pretty good shape. It can be tempting to just rip it out and get a new one if the style of your door isn’t quite what you have in mind, but luckily there are a lot of things you can do to a boring front door to make it stand out! Rather than replacing our front door when we added on our new front porch this year, we thought it might be more interesting to see what we could do to the door that we already had. Thanks so much to Schlage Canada for inspiring this project with the new handle set they provided!
Let’s first take a look at how this door and this area of our house looked when we started out. Here’s the whole front of our house just before we started on the new front porch project. We had just ripped out all of the landscaping that had made this part of the house a little friendlier looking so it was pretty cringe-worthy.
Here’s a little closer view of the front door area after we removed the cement steps. You can see why this door never got used. You can see the side porch that we installed last year is a much nicer entrance to use. Or it was, rather, until now!
Here’s how that same door looks now!
You can see that we removed that gross old screen door, but the actual front door is the same one!
If your front door could use a little (or a big) upgrade too, here are some ideas!
Paint Your Door
Let’s start with paint because that’s probably the first thing that people think of when they want to update their existing front door. A fresh new paint color can completely change the personality of a door and your entire entryway. Often times, just a new coat of paint and some updated accessories are all you really need. We went with a color called “Keystone Grey”, which as you can see is kind of a light grey/blue type of color. Since we’re slowly getting rid of all of the old green shutters from our house and going with an all-white look, I loved that I got to choose something that I really wanted, and not just something that would look OK with the green.
Install a New Handle Set
There are many times when just a coat of paint on a front door is enough, but there are also many (many, many) where it is not. It’s a bit of a pet-peeve of mine when I see a really outdated door with a worn-out handle set painted a bright, bold color. The handle set or door knob that you use on your front door is really the “jewelry” of the door and sets the tone for the style direction for your whole entryway. Installing a new handle set is so quick and easy and will really complete the freshening-up of your front door.
This handle set that we used from Schlage Canada is very similar to the one that we used on our side porch door leading into the mudroom, but it’s a little weightier looking and a little more appropriate for the look we were going for on our front porch. This is from the Schlage Custom line and we chose the “Century” trim package in oil rubbed bronze, along with the “Hobson” glass knob for the interior part of the door to match our other interior knobs.
I should note that if you’re choosing new door knobs or a new handle set, it will typically be easier to choose a set that is the same type/configuration as what you currently have on your door. We previously had just a single knob on this door and we upgraded to this full handle set, which required us to drill a few holes. Luckily, this is something that Chris is comfortable doing and something we had the tools for, so it wasn’t a problem for us.
Get a New Window Insert
Did you even know that you can do that? If you have a door with a glass insert like we do, there’s a good chance that there are options available to replace just the glass. You can actually order a lot of different types of glass inserts for your door in the door and window section of your local hardware store. We used to have a window in our door that opened up and had a screen on it. While the functional window seemed like it might be a good feature, in reality the screen and all the extra plastic parts of the window that made it functional also made it really ugly. We replaced it with just a plain flat glass panel and the whole door overall looks so much better. The view out of the door now is so much better and it even lets a lot more light in!
Add New Trim Around the Door
I did quite a bit of research when I was trying to plan what to do with this door, and by that I mean that I looked at about a million pictures of front doors on Instagram and Pinterest. 🙂 One of the things that I found kind of surprising was what a difference the trim around a door made in the overall appearance of an entryway. You often think of adding trim and moldings to an interior space, but I was surprised to see how very similar doors looked quite different when they had more or less trim around them. In my opinion, more trim almost always looked better. So we added some big, chunky trim around the door where we previously had basically none.
Install a New Porch Light
One of the things that I learned when we did that side porch is what a difference a porch light or two can make in an entryway. Of course, they’re important to have for the way the space functions, but they also really work with the door hardware to help reinforce the overall design personality of the space. We chose a big lantern with straight lines to work with the straight lines on the Schlage Century handleset on the door and I think they just look perfect together.
We did something similar on the side porch with two smaller lanterns and another version of the Century handle set from the same line and it worked really well. For the front porch, we just wanted everything to look a little bit heavier and a little more important. Plus, look at that wavy old-fashioned glass!
So that’s how we updated our front door!
Do you have a tired-looking front door that could use a little help?
We’re almost done with the entire front porch project, so keep an eye out for a post sharing this whole space soon!
Thanks so much to Schlage Canada for sponsoring this post!
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.