The first DIY project at #thecoolcolonial is in the books! I painted our front door a custom berry color and added something extra joyful.

Our new house is all greige and white with some black accents, which is very elegant and looks great but it’s not my style. Even before we moved in, I was feeling like I’m in my berry era and wanted to give this house an early jolt of our style personality, which was easy to do by painting the front door.

I also want to do things a little differently in this house, and lean even more into color, pattern and silly or quirky design when and where it makes sense. The front door was my first and easiest chance to do that.

To get that perfect berry color, I tested out four colors from Valspar*. Two were almost what I wanted so I combined them – Glorious (which I thought was too red on its own) and Hint of Cherry (which was coming off as too tropical for what I was going for). I mixed them about 50/50 for a vibrant berry that is a jolt of joy from the inside and out. I should have primed (oops!) so it took three coats of Door & Trim paint but the front door color and quality of paint looks great. 

Going for a pink color is definitely new for me but I couldn’t stop there. I was directly inspired by this image, taken by Michael Sparrow, that I saw on Instagram and it made me happy just thinking about possibly doing this one day.

Once we bought our house, I knew our front door would have googly eyes too. Now that we have a front door with googly eyes, our house exudes happiness every day.