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by Rachel Lyon, Editorial Director for The House Designers
If you’re drawn to the modern farmhouse style or any other kind of updated traditional architecture, make sure to consider your transitional door options. The front entry helps set the tone for your façade and can also make an impact on your interior design, depending on the floor plan. A home that blurs the lines between conventional and contemporary aesthetics needs a door to match—here are some ideas you can consider to outfit your transitional home perfectly!
Embrace Clean Lines
Traditional doors are known for their craftsmanship. They’re diverse and defined by rail and stile construction, panels in all sorts of shapes and looks, and decorative glass that helps set the right tone for different kinds of architecture. On the other hand, contemporary doors keep things simple with straightforward lites, if any, and linear or geometric glass to match. Transitional homes tend to have doors on the more contemporary side of the spectrum, as they aim to streamline and modernize familiar features, but that doesn’t mean you have to choose something basic.
Take a step back and imagine your whole house. Your front door should complement it, of course, but as a natural focal point, you can and should give the entry more interest to draw the eye. That might mean selecting a door with multiple clear lites or filling a large, single lite with a stylish, understated glass pattern. Make sure to explore the lite—including sidelite and transom—and glass options to find the right combination and balance for your façade!
Choose a Fitting Color
One of the best ways to make your entry stand out is with a bright door color, but that’s nothing new. Many historical homes sport dramatic painted doors to set themselves apart from similar structures on the same street, and modern design often does the same because pops of color make a bold statement. In that same vein, a transitional home can be perfectly suited to practically any door color, as long as it fits with the overall scheme.
Check out the most common type of transitional home to see what we mean. Modern farmhouses, which typically boast white or black exteriors, look wonderful with contrasting entries. You’ll find painted doors on white examples and wood-tone doors on black ones most often—these combinations provide plenty of visual impact without looking overdone.
If you have a different kind of transitional home, take cues from its base architecture and the other colors on its façade. An updated Craftsman, for example, will likely look great with a wood-look entry similar to those used on traditional versions, but you may choose a different stain to stand out from the siding if you have a new color palette in mind. If you really want to embrace an understated aesthetic—and many do, with streamlined formal traditional homes in particular—try keeping the door in the same color family as the rest of the house, but set it apart with a deeper tone and/or construction and glass details. Whether you like bold or subtle style, try a virtual design tool to test different colors and find the perfect scheme for your vision!
Consider Breadth
The easiest way to modernize any kind of home is to open up its living spaces and enlarge its windows. So, a transitional home may need a bigger entry to stay in balance. Doors come in a range of widths and heights to answer the call, but you can also expand the whole entrance with a transom and/or a sidelite or two. Going this route will put more brightening glass on your exterior without letting the door get out of proportion. And depending on the type of door and glass in question, it gives you the opportunity to impart more contrast and style. Just remember that increasing breadth will heighten any decorative effect, so you may want to reevaluate the glass design and swap for a simpler pattern to maintain a chic, transitional vibe.
No matter what kind of door you’re in the market for, Therma-Tru® has you covered with their extensive selection. They have a variety of wood-look and paintable collections full of opaque/solid doors as well as plenty with lites of all shapes and sizes, so you’re sure to find a stylish complement for any type of façade. Check out Therma-Tru’s 2023 New Products to see their latest options, many of which are ideal for today’s transitional architecture!