On the Inside, The Right Doors for Your Interior

Published: April 14, 2020

When you are choosing interior doors for your home, get the styles that you like. It's that simple. After all, your home reflects your tastes, so choose what you like.

That said, if your home has a distinctive architectural style, you might be happy choosing doors that compliment that style. Keep in mind, what works for an exterior door might not work as well for an interior door.

For one thing, you have a lot more flexibility to work with when choosing Interior doors. Gone are the considerations of weather and curb appeal. Once past the front door, the interior of your house is now well and truly your home. You can be more stylish or utilitarian in your choices, as you see fit. You choose doors to give a room a particular feel, helping to match or create the style you want there. Or you can just pick the door that works best, without worrying too much about the style. However, unless you're building a new home from the ground up, you still have to consider how well the door you choose will work with the architectural style of your home.

Generally speaking, there is not much you can do to alter the architecture of a house once it is built. You can modify or add on, certainly, but the basic design of the house remains. You might choose to add some more Modern stylish touches to your Victorian home, for example, but you are not going to transform it into a Pueblo Revival unless you tear it down and rebuild it.

So how do you want to deal with the architectural style of the house you are choosing doors for? Usually, this is a happy task. Presumably you are picking doors for the house since you like how it looks anyway. If you happen to be shopping for a house you don't like the looks of, well, I do hope the doors you buy from us change your mind about it! Either way, you have several options about how to deal with the style.

The first option is to embrace the style of your home, and compliment it with the doors you pick. For Victorian homes that means raised panel doors, for example. If you want a more austere look, for a Colonial home for example, go with flat panel doors. As a matter of fact, if you are unsure, go with a flat panel door and a coat of paint on it to match whatever Interior colors you have in mind. Flat panel doors work with most any house for interior doors, but the idea here is to match the general style or theme. Louvered closet doors work just fine in areas not frequented by guests, especially closets. Where a guest might see the doors, it's often better to match the style whenever you can. Modern styles often call for a French door, while custom or mission doors can accent a bolder architectural style as well, like those of the South West (Pueblo Revival, for example).

A second option is to just blend styles as you like. Emphasize the look you want for the interior (or for specific rooms) without worrying so much about the overall theme of the architecture. Need some light here and there? Use French doors. Want some air flowing in some rooms, or maybe a more casual atmosphere? Use louvered doors. If you want a door to a pantry or cellar to have a more Old World feel, use custom doors. And do not get the idea that if you are inconsistent with your door choices all sense of style your home has will be ruined. That is not true at all. Unify the look of your interior and interior doors by using consistent choices of wood (all Maple, for example, is a lovely choice), or with careful choices of paint. A tasteful mix of styles can be very stylish all by itself.

A third option would be to just discard the outer architectural style of the home and create a totally new look inside. Lets say you have a comfy Bungalow home, but you would rather have a more Victorian feel inside. Install raised panel doors all through the house to get the look you want. The combination of differing styles inside versus outside your home can be a surprising and delightful way to create a very individual look for your home.

Whatever you choose, make sure it is a look you are comfortable with. After all, the interior doors are the ones that you will be interacting with most of all in your daily life. Make very sure you like the interior doors you see, as you will be seeing them a lot. Even doors that you usually just walk by count. If nothing else, a little used closet door is still part of the decoration of a room. Make sure you pick one that you like, always.