Episode 118: Best Paint Colors For Your Front Door

HOLISTIC SPACES PODCAST

EPISODE 118: BEST PAINT COLORS FOR YOUR FRONT DOOR

Photo by Evelyn Paris on Unsplash

Photo by Evelyn Paris on Unsplash

Your front door is one of the most important parts of your home from a feng shui perspective, so it’s a good idea to give it some attention! In this episode, we’re sharing some of our favorite paint colors for front doors and what they represent.

We cover:

  • Why the front door is so important and what it means in feng shui

  • The importance of tapping into your intuition when choosing colors for your home

  • Our favorite paint colors for front doors and what each one represents

  • Taking an individualized approach to choosing colors

  • Why you should also take your design preferences and surroundings into account

  • Why you don’t need to be afraid to paint your door the “wrong” color

Thanks so much for listening to the Holistic Spaces Podcast brought to you by Mindful Design Feng Shui School!

Episode Transcript:

You’re listening to the Holistic Spaces Podcast brought to you by  Mindful Design Feng Shui School. Episode 118 Best Paint Colors for Your Front Door.

Welcome to episode 118 of the Holistic Space Podcast where we hope to inspire, educate, and empower you to create your own holistic spaces that nurture and resonate with you.

Anjie Cho and Laura Morris are the founders of Mindful Design Feng Shui School. Together they have over three decades of experience designing harmonious spaces.Laura and Anjie  have guided thousands of people to shift their energy and revitalize their lives. Mindful Design School offers feng shui courses and certifications. Check us out at mindfuldesignschool.com 

A: So today we’re looking forward to starting our new class of Certification students this weekend. Laura are you excited?

L: I am, yeah I am.


A: It’s really nice. We keep the class really small so we get to know everybody. It's always fun to meet the new cohort. We just said goodbye to the last one, which is sad, but we have a lot of continuing education. We have a weekly community call that many of us grads are a part of so we still see them there. But yeah it will be nice to see all the new students.


L: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.

A: So for today's podcast episode, you know I recently wrote an article for Real Simple. If you want a link to the article, be sure to sign up for our newsletter list. And we will have it in the newsletter. You can sign up for our newsletter by going to MindfulDesignschool.com and scroll to the bottom and there’s a place where you can sign up for our newsletter.

So besides teaching, I also write a lot about feng shui. I’m the feng shui expert at The Spruce and also have been writing a bit for Real Simple. So they asked me to write an article about the best paint colors according to feng shui for your front door and how to boost your curb appeal, so I thought we could run through that and also we’ll give it to you conversationally, which is really fun.

So Laura, let's talk about the front door.

What is the front door in feng shui?

L: The front door, we refer to it sometimes as the mouth of qi. And qi, if you've listened to our recent podcast, is energy or the vital energy that flows from nature. We want to invite that into our home. We want to be able to have it be signaled and called to and brought in and circulate through the house, so that front door is really really important.

So A) that it's working and that you can open it properly but also that you spend a little bit of time and intention on picking colors and how you set it up and what's around it and all that.

A: One thing with feng shui especially the feng shui that we practice. It's kind of a misconception that people ask us like “What color should I paint my room? What color should I paint my front door?” Because we’re going to give you guidelines on what the colors represent in feng shui, but when you work with someone or tap into your own intuition, you will know the answer. 

So you might not completely get the answer you want, but we are going to go over in general what the colors mean.

Again like Laura said, the front door is your mouth of qi so it's really important. One fun thing about paint colors is that you can quickly change the qi that you invite into your home with something as easy as a new coat of paint.

Also I feel that sometimes the paint color of the front door is often neglected and the color of the paint falls into disrepair very easily and people often don't pay attention, so you get accustomed to the front door of your home and sometimes you don't even use it that you don’t realize that your face to the world, or the world’s first impression of you is falling into disrepair or it’s crackling. Or there’s debris on it. 

So by taking a moment to decide on a new paint color and actually painting the door a new color, you're calling attention and bringing in qi into your home which can then trickle into other areas in your life.

So if you are looking to switch out the paint color of your front door or to bring in new energy, we’re just go step by step through a few different colors and talk about what the feng shui meaning is and how it may activate your front door.

So let's start with the most popular feng shui wise color

Guess which color that is Laura?

L: Is it red?

A: It is red!

L: Yeah... and there's so many reds too…

I would like to do my front door red, it’s just i don't want all of the...I don’t want all the qi...I want qi...and also i just feel for me that it's not what’s singing to me but it looks so good...

A: Wait why don’t you explain to listeners...you didn’t finish what you were saying...

L: It's very fiery. It's very dynamic. It’s very fiery. It’s auspicious. It’s good luck, it's protective. I mean red is great. Red is the color beyond all colors.

In feng shui, we look at shape, material, color when we are talking about the five elements right? And in BTB, shape is the most popular way to bring in the five Elements in. Unless you are talking about the color red. 

So the color red supersedes all colors. It is the king of colors, let’s put it that way, when it comes to feng shui.

I love it and I think it looks great when it’s a beautiful coat of red paint

But for me, right now...my house is actually red brick. It has a lot of fire in it already. You know I love it but I couldn’t do it right now.

But for some homes, especially if the qi is low and if you feel you need to shake stuff up, that's the color to do it with.

A: And another thing about red, what Laura was alluding to is that it could bring in a lot of new energy so even though people might think “red is the best feng shui color” that's true but it's not for everybody. So that's where we want you to come tap into what you need or work with someone who can advise you. Because red is not for everybody

It could also deplete you if you're not prepared for it.

There's a cute story, one of our recent graduates was telling me she did an activation of her fire area in her office. But it was too much. Because all of a sudden her ex boss, she said “oh my gosh my last boss,” she went on her own and she started doing something similar in competition with her former boss and her former boss contacted her and threatened to sue her.

And she had to balance that, so she balanced that in a mundane way with working with communication and figuring out what her legal rights were but she also balanced by using water. Sometimes when you activate with fire and if you aren't ready for it, it can consume everything. So you have to balance it and I don't want you to take a fear based approach, it's more like “Don’t over do it and watch your monitor.”
Thats why its always good to do one thing at a time and try it out.

And how with nutritionists, how when you do cleanse, you bring one thing back in at a time and see how your body feels. That's another way you can approach feng shui.

Make one shift and see how that feels and see if you're okay with it. 

And it’s okay to change a paint color back and change it to something else

So we’re not going to do all the colors in this article but let's go through a few of the popular ones. 

What about black? What do you think about black Laura? 

L: Well I have a black door

Well I think personally it looks on a design standpoint, it looks great on an old Victorian house, it looks awesome, that's why I did it. But also it also worked out for me.

Black is the water element. Water is about bringing in opportunities and having things flow to you but also in the position of where my door is, it also lined up with the bagua. And in that area is career which lined up for me perfectly which is black and water

For me it worked out well.

If it sounds like too much for you, then work with a feng shui consultant.  

When the design for the house, what's happening with the elements of the house and positioning of the door, when that all lines up with what also resonates with you, that's when the energy is lining up. 

When we bought this house the door was yellow, the door, and it just wasn't what I wanted, for me it didn't land for me. So I immediately, that was one of the first things, was paint the door black

A: Let’s talk about the yellow in a second, but back to black. Yeah, I agree that black is an elegant color. And in feng shui it's related to the Water element which is deep wisdom so it makes sense that it has this deep elegance to it. So if you're thinking of black, you'd be welcoming the Water element. It also has the quality of bringing in and absorbing positive energy from the outside world.

So since you're a Water element. And your husband is Earth. Yellow is actually an Earth element too. So you changed it because you probably also don't really, if your door is in the water area, the earth can muddy things up a bit and slow things down, and also maybe you just didn't like the yellow. So people need to understand your tastes and your attraction should be called into play here and we all 

With design in feng shui there's so many considerations, there's so many creative ways to manifest it that you want to pay attention to also what you're attracted to.

So if you're not attracted to the yellow door, that will probably be really bad feng shui. It's not going to feel good to have a door color that you really dislike but because you think it's good energy.

L: And for me, again, when you start to practice this, it's sort of in your brain and you sort of just look at things

So my house has a lot of fire and earth overall. And so I just instantly felt it needed balance.

And having that yellow there which is really strong in Earth, I just needed to break it up. There was too much Fire and too much Earth and Fire makes more earth and it felt really stuck to me and water was one of the ways and of course adding greenery and stuff around it, but for the door itself, it also worked for me to not have the Earth

But having said that, yellow doors are also great. I think it looks great on gray houses. It just looks fantastic.

And the yellow is connected to health. Connected to nurture. Connected to really slowing down and embracing, receptive and it's got all these lovely qualities. I like yellow as a color, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I don’t like it. And I have it in my house, but for the door it does not work.

But for you, if that's something that clicks for you — that homey earthy nurturing vibe, then yellow is the color of Earth. 


A: Yeah I agree. Earth element if you need more Earth, more stability, more self care, support with your health. And that said again, there's other ways to do feng shui.

But if were just talking about front doors, that's what yellow can invoke

And the last tip I have on your front door doesn't have to do with paint colors necessarily. Also you have to pay attention to what’s happening in the environment around you

So what does the rest of your house look like, like what Laura said, if you have a gray house, yellow actually compliments it really well. So you have to look at that aspect of it

Does it make sense? Does it look correct? Is it in harmony with your environment?

And say if all the houses look a certain way in the block, do you really want to be the odd house out with the purple exterior and purple doors.

There's actually a story that Professor Lin told someone to paint their house purple and it's something like that where basically..it worked really well for them because it really stood out

They were making sales...

But I'm going to stop before i start creating a fake story...you know what I’ll make up a story.

But the idea is if you want to pay attention to your environment, so either being in harmony and complimenting your environment, and seeing if you want to stand out.

If you do want to stand out, you can do something shocking, like paint your house purple and your front door purple. But know that there’s implications with that, with the harmony of how you connect to your environment, not just people and your neighbors, but also how you connect with people as a whole.

But that said, there’s also really elegant ways to stand out as well and that's where you can bring in your own skillfulness and your design eye right?

L: Actually the one story I know about doors and the Professor and painting is him looking at the neighborhood and telling someone to paint their door to create a particular cycle, because he looked at all his neighbors doors, and it worked out that he was moving up the five element cycle

So that was integrating with the whole community but also working with what is around you

Now, that is the Professor, and you know obviously that kind of level of figuring out paint color is is not what we're trying to tell you today, but it shows you how feng shui is so much more than the color itself, it is about the surroundings and working with the energies all around you

So that for me is why it's so important not to get so worked up and nervous that you're going to make a mistake about the color you pick.

Like oh my gosh what if I put this color and it’s not in the right Gua or whatever ..if you are that worried, work with a consultant first of all and they will talk you down and calm you down and realize there’s no fear around this..

But look at what's happening, feel what it is, get some swatches, feel how you feel, like Anjie said, slowly try to integrate it. And again you can paint and leave it for 27 days if you hate it paint a different over


A: Yeah I see a lot of people get into this fatigue of making decisions, especially if you're doing some kind of refresh for your home in general. And it's totally understandable so just make a decision. It's not the worst thing in the world to re-do your door. It's one of the easiest fixes

So if it's not working for you you can always change it. But it's also something fun, to regularly change the qi in the door. Kinda like a new haircut or lipstick. Yes change it up. 

Well thank you so much Laura.

And thank you listeners for listening to this episode of the Holistic Spaces podcast. And you can tune in every Monday for a new podcast episode. If you like our podcast and this episode, please share it with others. You can subscribe on Itunes, or Stitcher, or Spotify, we’re on a bunch of things  

We're really excited. Next week we are going to host one of our graduates, Will Brown, and he’s going to talk about feng shui gardens and a feng shui gardening project he did.

And if you would like to explore the world of holistic spaces and feng shui on an even deeper level, you can visit our website, online store, and blog for more information about feng shui and holistic living at holisticspaces.com.


You can support our podcast by checking out our certification and mini courses on mindfuldesignspaces.com. We should have maybe a practical feng shui up in the next couple of months so that's a great class to go to if you just want to get some feedback. And thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you next week!