A guide to updating doors and hardware
Doors, knobs and hinges. They’re often overlooked in a house and are pretty much thought of as utilitarian, especially in a builder-grade home. They’re there to let you in and out of rooms around your house and not really given much of a second thought. Heck, until pretty recently we’d had a hodgepodge of mismatched and partially painted over metal hinges and brushed nickel door levers that were better suited to a middle school science lab. Sure, they functioned and looked “fine” for 8 years.
Until I began to swap them out.
Then I realized just how big of a difference they’d made in our space and kicked myself for not doing it years ago.
A little before and after so you can see just what I’m talking about, especially if you are of the mindset (like we were recently) that it isn’t that noticeable:
One of my favorite door knob fails we had going on in the house was how a previous owner mounted the curvy silver dummy knob on one of our office french doors a little “off” so that the handle was angled up, higher than it was supposed to. (You could really tell compared to the other, normal working handle on the matching door which was straight and because the screws on the left and right sides of the dummy knob’s mounting plate should be in a straight horizontal line across from each other and not at a diagonal angle.)
Painting Doors + trim
We prefer semi-gloss for our doors and trim, as it provides a nice contrast in sheen against our (very textured) flat-painted walls, isn’t so glossy that it highlights any and all imperfections and dings that happen with real life, and is nicely, durably scrubbable. Speaking of the latter, high-quality paint is a must-have in this house. We’ve done the cheap paints in the past and while you pay less per gallon, you have to apply a lot more coats which equals more money than you thought, more time to do the project, and it definitely ends up costing you in the end when it doesn’t hold up and you have to repaint.
For high-quality paint we know will last, we love Sherwin Williams Emerald paint line – We’ve used the Emerald Interior Acrylic Latex for walls and Emerald Exterior Acrylic Latex for our exterior trim. For doors and trim specifically – in the camper and in the house – we use Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel.
Doors
Way back when, I painted all of our interior doors Tricorn Black by Sherwin Williams – a rich, pretty, true neutral black (it doesn’t have any undertones that make it look a little something else in different lights), and a stark contrast from the basic builder white they’d always been that constantly showed signs of lived-in grubbiness and lacked the cozy depth and custom feel I was wanting in our home.
Door trim + Baseboards
Then came the trim around the doors and the baseboards throughout the house. It, too, was white. In fact, we learned early on in many rooms it wasn’t even painted and instead was just rockin’ the “pre-primed” look you can buy straight from the hardware store. Which is not so great since it’s literally made to be a little “sticky” so the actual paint stays on over time, meaning all the dust and dirt and dog hair also wants to stick to it.
(We’ve also recently started working on our home office but haven’t finished, so please forgive the unfinished ceiling/walls in there!)
Hardware
Finally, we’re at the hardware – what I like to think of as the jewelry of the door and where you can completely change the look and feel with a simple swap!
Knobs
We opted to play with texture and sheen, keeping the knobs a matte (nearly black) oil rubbed bronze, that has just a hint of warm bronze metal to highlight the shape of the “rose” (fun fact: that’s the proper name for what I call the mounting plate). The combination of matte metal with the small amount of bronze detail sandwiched between our true-black semi-gloss doors and the actual door knob really lets the high gloss clear antique-feeling glass knobs pop out even more without going with a high color contrast option like brass.
Why did we switch from levers to knobs, you might ask? While both can look fabulous in any home, one extra thing to consider is how each function and what works best for your lifestyle. In addition to loving the character glass vintage-style knobs provide, our black lab, Zeus, would creepily open our doors to let himself into rooms – mostly to get into our bed – by turning the door levers with his mouth. (Super off-putting if you’re in the room while he’s attempting a B&E.) But not an issue now that we have knobs. (Sorry, not sorry, Zeus!)
While there’s definitely no hard and fast rule, with something like doors and door hardware, I prefer to keep the look consistent throughout the house to help tie the rooms together, even though we have some doors that lock and use a privacy knob, others that don’t and have a passage knob and one that’s a dummy knob (meaning, it doesn’t actually do anything except look nice and is often used on one door in a set of french doors).
What if I want to switch it up and go mismatch?
If you’re going for more of an eclectic look it is totally okay to mix and match knobs. For example, mixing different hand painted ceramic knobs throughout the house. I would still try to find some way to unify them so they look intentionally mismatched and like a perfectly imperfect set – like using different shaped glass knobs of the same color, or if you’re doing the aforementioned painted ceramic knobs, it would look nice if each individual pattern were different, but the overall colors were the same to help them coordinate throughout the house.
Hinges
Lastly, we have hinges. Maybe the most utilitarian and unassuming part of the door setup – I mean hey, they are pretty much hidden when the door is shut after all – but as I learned, they definitely do make a statement to the whole set, so you want to make sure it’s making a good statement.
The best I can explain it is having the hodgepodge of paint-marked silver and brass mixed hinges next to a well-painted, trimmed-out door with a beautiful knob is like going out with a new well-fitting outfit, your hair and makeup all done up and then wearing 20-year-old ratty stained sneakers with the soles falling off. Yeah they’re comfortable, and yeah they might technically still function … you might even think no one will notice, but they do and a simple swap can and will make all the difference even if it’s not the first thing you see when you look at the outfit. Just trust me on this.
Dissimilar to how I sometimes wear my shoes (being a bit of a self-confessed shoe addict), for hinges I wanted them to be an accessory that quietly complemented the rest of the door’s outfit versus a statement all on their own. To do this I chose flat black hinges so they sort of disappeared into the door itself, really letting the door, trim and glass vintage-inspired door knob shine.
If I haven’t already convinced you, here are some more side-by-sides for good measure:
Here you can get another look at how the light gray trim looks against the black doors and really helps it become more of a feature against the off white walls than the white trim did. (Not to mention they help hide real-life dirt a little better … shhh!)
Get the look
Doors
Hardware
Clear Glass Knobs – Privacy Bed/Bath (with lock) | Passage (no lock) | Dummy (false knob, just for show)
Paint
Doors – Sherwin Williams Tricorn Black | Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel | Semi-Gloss Finish
Trim + Baseboards – Sherwin Williams Mindful Gray | Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel | Semi-Gloss Finish
Have you updated the doors / trim / hardware in your house?
If you haven’t yet – what are you waiting for? It’s such a relatively quick and easy way to give your home a unique custom look!
