Avoid These Colors If You’re Painting Your Front Door

Thinking about giving your front door a fresh coat of paint ahead of listing it for sale? Before you choose a color, think about how specific shades can affect your profits.

New Zillow research found that a door color can have a big effect on how much buyers will pay for your home, sometimes by thousands of dollars. But there's no single color that’s better than the rest. The right pick for you might depend largely on your home's exterior.

And before you pick up a paintbrush, think about working with a local Zillow Premier Agent partner. They can help you decide which upgrades actually pay off in your market. 

The home exteriors studied

Zillow’s study included four types of home exteriors: 

• Light brick
• Solid white
• White wood with light brick
• Dark red brick

The colors studied

The color white served as the baseline for this study off of which four other front door colors were compared. Zillow’s study included the following colors for front doors: 

• Dark grey
• Light blue green
• Yellow
• Red

Dark grey

If you've got a dark red brick home, dark grey is your winner by far. Charcoal grey could add as much as $3,753 to your home’s offer price. That cool, moody grey creates contrast against warm red brick. 

For any other home exterior, dark grey could hurt your sale. For example, offers on a light brick home with a dark grey door could come in as much $3,741 lower compared to a white front door.

Light blue green

Got a solid white home? Light blue green is your money-maker. It delivered the biggest color payoff in the whole study, potentially adding $5,023 to the home's sale price. It also gives a nice lift to dark red brick homes, up to $2,460.

Skip this shade on light brick or mixed exteriors, though, where it tends to fall flat. On a light brick home, for example, your selling price could be $4,221 lower with a light blue green door out front.

Yellow

Warm and welcoming, yellow shines on lighter homes. Buyers responded well to this color on a solid white home, offering an average of $1,966 more than if it had a white door. Yellow can add some sunny personality without overwhelming a simple facade.

Just steer it away from light brick homes, where it lowered offers by $2,907. 

Red

Red is the biggest gamble on this list overall. On a solid white home, it can nudge offers up by around $2,512. But with the other home exteriors we surveyed buyers on, red pushed prices into the negative. On a light brick home it was the costliest mistake in the entire study, potentially knocking as much as $6,738 off what buyers would pay. On a white-and-brick home it landed near the very bottom, with a $3,953 offer reduction. Red can be a big win on the right house, and expensive on the wrong one.

A door color cheat sheet

Not sure where to start? Find your home's exterior:

• All-white home: Light blue green, yellow, or red (anything but white!)
• Light brick: White
• White + light brick: White or yellow
• Dark red brick: Dark grey or white

The rule of thumb is simple: The busier your exterior is (like having lots of brick, mixed materials, or several colors) the more appealing a neutral door can seem. The plainer your exterior, the more a pop of color pays off.

Of course, just because you chose your front door color wisely doesn’t guarantee you’ll maximize the price you ultimately sell for. 

Numerous other cosmetic factors, including digital curb appeal, could skew a buyer’s perception of your home. It’s also important to consider the color and material of your home’s exterior to determine which paint color is a good fit. Need more color inspiration? Here are the best colors to paint your home’s interior if you’re looking into that, too.