How to brighten up your home with new doors

A dark room can sometimes seem smaller than it actually is, brightening up that room will give it an instant lift and can make it appear larger. There are a number of ways for brightening a room, such as extra artificial light, limiting dark colour accents, decorating with plenty of mirrors, and dressing windows with light curtains or linings. However, you can also use your doors to brighten a dark room. So next time you are replacing your doors, there may be a few things you can consider.     

Doors as a decoration features are often overlooked, especially internal doors  that are often not given much consideration as external doors . But, there are a number of ways the doors in your house can encourage the transfer of light to a darker room and be an interesting design feature. The extensive range of house doors found here at Wonkee Donkee XL Joinery gives you plenty of options for installing doors that will enhance almost any decorating style. Whether you have a contemporary minimal style or a traditional cottage home, we should have a selection of doors to suit you.

The colour of your doors

One of the first thing you can consider for your doors is their colour. White Primed and White Moulded doors can be kept white and given a coat of gloss to reflect as much light as possible. A gloss will ensure any light is reflected much more than with matt white doors. A bright white can easily make an area feel more spacious and white doors are particularly popular as door used upstairs for rooms such as bedrooms and bathrooms, especially if they lead to a narrow hallway. Alternatively, if you want a bit more of an unusual look, while still keeping the doors light, why not opt for an off white or a pastel shade. Also, brighter colours, like bright yellow, can be funky and modern looking, and should keep the room looking bright, especially if you use a gloss paint. Knotty pine doors are also ideal for being painted in any colour. To save time, we now also supply a range of fully finished white doors.

If you prefer to have the natural look of wood, opt for a wood with a lighter shade. Oak is always a popular choice of wood for doors and other furniture items. Oak doors can be stained clear, if they are internal doors, so they will maintain the light appearance with a traditional, classic look of natural wood. You can also consider the internal sides of external doors. You must use the same medium on all sides of a door, but that does not mean it has to be the same colour on all sides. As long as you choose the same type and brand of product to finish a door you can opt for a different colour on each face. So, you can have a front door in whatever colour you choose and maybe paint the back of the door white, so the room it leads to sees a lovely light reflecting surface. For a really luxurious look, Oak doors with aluminium inlays will really stand out.

Glazed doors

It’s obvious to most people that using glazed external doors  can really help to brighten up a room, but what about glazed internal doors ? Choosing a glazed door over a panelled door is a simple way of transferring more light around your home. Hallways are often dark, with little or no natural light coming directly into them, having an array of glazed doors  leading to that hallway will bring all the light from those rooms into that space, even when all the doors are closed. If you have a room with lots of natural light, you can use that to transfer light into a darker area simply with a glazed door. So, say you have a lovely bright living room leading to a dining room with little natural light, a glazed door is an ideal choice to bring in light. 

The large range of styles we have of glazed internal doors provides you with plenty of choices. Doors can have very large clear glass panels, such as with our glazed Pattern 10 style doors, or you may just want a little extra light coming through and might opt for a door with much smaller glazed areas, such as the Monza glazed doors or the beautiful Pesaro glazed doors. If privacy is an issue, why not choose a door that is glazed with obscure glass. For really small spaces, you can consider a glazed bi-fold door , ideal when space to open a standard door is limited.

External glazed doors have always been a very popular way of brightening homes. Patio doors and external French doors are distinguished by their large areas of glazing. We have an excellent choice of La Port Vista French door sets  that come with their frame and hardware. Choose the White Primed French doors to reflect more light into the room, opt for Oak French doors with the addition of one or two sidelights, to provide an even larger glazed area, or select Hardwood French doors and paint them any colour you choose. Alternatively, you might choose to create a wall of glass doors with an eight door folding door. La Port Vista folding doors  will give any home a real wow factor. They are also available in Oak or White Primed, and can be bought with a choice of two to eight doors, depending on the size of the doorway. 

Your front door can also be glazed, and we supply a wonderful array of external glazed doors , including doors with beautiful decorative glass panels. We can provide you with even more choice with our range of unglazed external doors , ready to have glass panels of your choice installed. For added glazed areas around a front door, we recommend you consider sidelights. Our sidelight frame kits  mean you can have either one or two sidelight panels at the side of your front, or back, door.   

Widen doorways

This is perhaps a bit of a drastic option for some people as it will usually involve some structural work, but just imagine if that narrow door leading to your dark room were a double glazed door, or even a double door with side lights? A room divider comprised of doors is a wonderful way to really open up a space. The options for creating double door room dividers include Easi-frame systems  that can accommodate doors and sidelights up to a total of 2017mm (79" approx) x 3000mm (118" approx).

You can make almost any of the internal doors from our collections into double doors with our pair makers ; pieces of timber that create a rebated edge on one door so a second door can close against it. Or, if you prefer, we have an excellent selection of rebated door pairs  that don’t require a pair maker. Our other room divider systems are Freefold folding doors . These work with any 24” internal doors and can be used to accommodate between two and eight doors. Choose glazed doors  with large glass panels to get the maximum light transfer even when the doors are closed, or you can opt for doors with smaller glazed panels and have the option to alter the amount of light transfer, depending on whether the doors are open or closed.

Door accessories and hardware

Another thing to consider is your door hardware and any other features you can add to your door. Choosing hardware that is metallic and bright will help to reflect as much light as possible. But also adding things such as mirrors to the side of a door that faces a dark room means you can opt for a panelled door while still reflecting some light, and saving on wall space.