Give your Front Door a fresh look with Paint

INSIDE : Learn how to make easy repairs to rotten wood and then give your Curb Appeal a fresh look with paint! With a little DIY effort, you can save so much money and enjoy a new look to your front door.

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I have been wanting to repaint our exterior gates, screen door and garage door trim for a WHILE… like three years. But, I had other projects come up and updating our curb appeal just kept getting pushed off. The raspberry red paint was abrasive to my eyes and it never felt good to “come home” to a color that I disliked so much.

I finally decided this summer was the year to give my home a fresh look. I should also add that this was not JUST a paint job update. All three of our outdoor gates had various levels of wood rot and disrepair, so there was a lot of work that needed to be done before painting could even begin. Check out how I was able to easily repair wood rot.

Here are some of the before pictures of our entry area.

Supplies needed for painting outdoor gates and front doors

Sanding Blocks
Microfiber Cloth
Wooster Shortcut Angle Paintbrush – This is my FAVORITE brush and I use it ALL the time.
Roller
Plastic Paint Tray
Behr Ultra Exterior Paint + Primer in Winter Way
Behr Ultra Exterior Paint + Primer in Gazebo Gray

How to best paint your front door and gates

I can hardly even tell you how lovely it is to walk out my door or look out our front windows and see this new fresh blue on our home. It definitely took me some time to get all three of our gates and the front screen door painted, but it was so well worth the effort!

I started painting our front screen door with a light sanding using my sanding block. Sometimes it may be necessary to strip your wood down to raw wood, but I opted to simply paint over the current red paint.

The sanding is just to rough up the wood and allow for your paint to stick a little better.

Once you have given everything a light sanding, you will need to clean off the wood from all of the dust. I think using a Microfiber cloth is best for this job.

I always use this Wooster Shortcut Angle Paintbrush for my trim painting work. I adore this paintbrush. It fits my hand so nicely and it has a flexible or soft handle, so it really makes me have less hand cramps.

Behr Winter Way PPU25-23

I used Behr Ultra Exterior Paint + Primer in Winter Way as my deep accent color for the front screen door and our three gates. A roller brush helped on the bigger flat areas. The paint I got is a paint and primer, which I love. I only had to do two coats to cover bright red, that’s saying a lot!

Behr Gazebo Gray PPF-18

It took me a lot of trial and error to find the perfect contrasting color for the wooden trim piece above our door and for our garage door. The garage door post is coming soon. But after painting a few shades of gray, I ended up really loving this very very light gray color, Behr Ultra Exterior Paint + Primer in Gazebo Gray.

You can read more in depth about my Interior Paint colors here.

Looking for my other outdoor Curb Appeal projects? Look no further!

- Give your Curb Appeal a fresh look with paint
- Painting your Garage Door
- Painting your Mailbox and Address Tiles
- How to Easily Repair Minor Wood Rot
- Install Faux Garage Door Windows
- Decorative Garage Door Hardware
- DIY Wooden Sunburst Doormat

Curb Appeal details

My favorite part of giving your home and curb appeal an updated look is those lovely detail accessories! And many times all you need to add is plants.

I have a lemon thyme sitting at our front courtyard bistro table. I love the wild look of potted herbs and this lemon thyme smells so lovely.

Another favorite of mine is Hummingbird mint. Look how great the red flowers are against the blue door.

Having a few different sizes of pots gives your front door a lovely layered look. I have Agastache (Hummingbird Mint) and a Christmas Cactus shown here.

I hung this bell chime and I love the sweet sound it occasionally makes. It’s very old, I have had it for years and year. So, I gave it a fresh coat of copper colored spray paint.

Another easy way to update your curb appeal is with a new doormat. I loved this West Elm Semi Circle Dash mat and it has a perfect pop of blue!

Modern Southwest Front Door

The freshly painted door now complements our bistro table and pillows. I love mixing patterns and think this does it so well.

I keep walking in and out of our front door now… it just makes me SO HAPPY. And that is exactly what our homes are supposed to do – be places that give us comfort after long tiring days.