Front Door Makeover In Paean Black

It was kind of inevitable really. We’ve given our front door a makeover. Yes. Again. We’re now on the fourth colour and I can honestly say that I’ve never had so much trouble choosing a colour. Ever.

But, as you may have already seen in our Instagram Stories, we’ve finally found a colour that we love! Can you guess what we chose?

Just as a reminder, this is what it looked like until recently…

After all of the back and forth, I knew that we’d finally found “the one” as soon as I saw the new Farrow & Ball colour chart.

It’s Paean Black! And we love it!

Our door has gone from a vibrant yellow to this deep and rich black-purple colour. As soon as I started applying the primer, I knew that going dark was the right thing to do.

I appreciate that crossing over to the dark side may not be for everyone but in small doses, a bold colour is always a risk worth taking. And, as much as we didn’t find the right colour for our door straight away, changing such a small area is easy and quick!

Because our hallway is quite dark, we initially thought we had to choose a vibrant colour that would be bright enough to shine in the dark space.

That’s why we chose a light blue – it was Pale Berlin by Little Greene (well, we couldn’t resist that name, could we?!) followed by our next choice which was the much brighter Babouche by Farrow & Ball.

Neither really worked for us.

Don’t get me wrong. They weren’t awful (although I really didn’t like the blue) but they both didn’t make me overwhelmingly happy either. There were only a couple of hours a day where the lighting conditions were right and the yellow was punchy.

In reality, instead of looking vibrant and bright, the colours looked muddy and kind of dirty most of the time. It feels like the dark hallway sucks all life out of the colours.

We probably should have learned our lesson after painting the door the first time!

No colour is ever going to look bright in the hallway and there is just no point fighting the dark space. So, we decided to go with the flow and embrace the dark side!

As much as the colour change has made a big impact, the biggest change we made to the door wasn’t painting it – it was adding the panelling.

It used to be completely flat but now looks much more in keeping with the style of our home and matches the other doors. (You can read about our full door makeover and the reasons we decided to leave it boarded up and add panelling here.)

Even if the yellow door was starting to grow on me, I’m so glad that we changed it to Paean Black. It’s such a rich colour and has a kind of classy and more formal feel which I think suits the style of the apartment. It’s one of those colours that seems to change throughout the day, too.

It’s mostly black but it also has lovely red and purple undertones that feel quite sophisticated and give it a touch of elegance.

It may have taken us a while to get there but I love the colour and it’s here to stay! It’s also about time we actually finished some of the other projects around our home instead of doing the same ones over and over again!

It’s always annoying when things don’t turn out as you imagine but luckily this time it only took a bit of paint to fix! Now we just need to get the rest of the hallway sorted!

And, now that we’ve finished the inside of our front door, we can finally turn our attention to the outside which, at the moment, is a not so lovely shade of what I like to call “prison grey”.

We’ve already made a start and I can’t wait to finish it so that I can share the result. I’m not exactly sure how well it will turn out but it’s definitely not going to be what you’ll expect!

Have you ever had trouble choosing paint colours? What do you think of the new Farrow & Ball colours? Do you love Paean Black as much as we do? Or, did you prefer the yellow door?

PS. We also added a stunning wallpaper mural to our hallway! Click here to see how it completely transformed the space.