The interior and exterior colors of your house are largely a matter of personal preference; if that weren’t true, painting wouldn’t be much fun. Nevertheless, color-matching guidelines can help you maintain congruity and a sense of harmony, which, according to feng shui, helps you maintain a positive and healthy outlook. Painting doors to match the walls doesn’t violate these guidelines, but it doesn’t always further them, either. Design scheme and door placement are also important considerations.
Highlights and Contrast
Interior designers traditionally consider the door as part of the interior trim, which includes the baseboards and door and window casings. It’s unusual to paint trim the same color as the walls, although the monochromatic effect this creates can complement oversized windows or a prominent fireplace. Designers more commonly use trim to highlight the wall colors by painting them a different color, and they often choose a color for the door that either matches the trim or complements it. In a bold color scheme, the door can even provide contrast. A red door in a room with pastel green walls and forest green trim is an example of such a bold contrast.
Feng Shui and Direction
In feng shui, the door defines the north direction in a room, and the colors for north are black and blue. The actual geographic direction that the door faces is also important. Depending on the nature of the room, it may be more advantageous to emphasize one over another. For example, red emphasizes the natural fire element of a south-facing door, but if the room has a fireplace on the wall opposite the door, a blue door defines the fireplace wall as south, which is an appropriate placement for a fireplace. On the other hand, in a room with few defining characteristics, painting the south-facing door red reinforces actual geographic orientation and is probably more appropriate.
Matching Colors
If you have a room full of interesting furniture or expressive paintings, you may not need much definition from the wall and door colors. In that case, you may choose to paint the doors the same color as the walls. The paint you use for doors usually has a different sheen than wall paint, and that difference can be more than enough to distinguish the door and make it stand out. If the door opens into the room, you usually paint the edge the same color as that side of the door. Don’t forget to pay attention to the choice of color on the opposite side of the door, since it’s visible when the door is open.
Exterior Door Colors
Whereas it isn’t uncommon to paint an interior door the same color as the walls, the same isn’t true for exterior doors. In feng shui terms, an exterior door — particularly the main entrance door — is a gateway for chi, or energy, to enter the house. It should harmonize not only with the color of the walls, but also the surroundings and the direction the door faces so as to attract the type of energy you want. For example, green is the natural color for east and emphasizes the wood element. If the house is already predominantly green, though, or lots of trees are around the house, you might choose another color, such as blue, red or white, to bring in the element that color represents.