Our Guide to Painting a Wooden Front Door
A new lick of paint or a completely different colour on your front door adds heaps of character and makes the neighbours look in awe. Not sure where to start? Here’s a step-by-step guide to all the things you need to do to paint your wooden front door.
Choosing the right paint and other materials you may need
The first thing you’ll need to consider is what paint you’ll use and what colour it’ll be. Regardless of the colour you want to use you should note that you can’t just buy any old paint for a wooden front door. It needs to be a high quality door paint that can battle the different weather changes across the year while still having a nice glossy and brilliant finish.
You may want to consider applying an under base first, especially if you’re going to be changing the colour of your front door. When sanding down your door and removing the door paint, you may also find a few holes, discolouration, and slight damage you weren’t aware of before. In these cases you should look to buy knott blocker and/or colourless knotting to stop resin from showing through in the paint.
Once you’ve bought all the equipment you need, including paint brushes, it’s time to prepare the wood on your door.
Prepare the wood
If you’re repainting a door, or working with a door that’s been painted previously, it’s important to sand down the door first. It should be a higher grit sandpaper - we recommend 240 grit sandpaper. This level of grit will give your door a nice smooth finish and perfect to paint over.
At this point you’ll also be able to see if there are any knots in the woodwork that need seeing to. This is where your knott blocker comes in handy! You could also use knotting fluid like this Barrettine White Knotting to remove any stains while also acting as a good primer for the door.
Be sure to brush away all the excess wood chippings and dust from the workspace before opening your can of paint.
Begin to paint
Mix the paint through before applying it to the door and use a synthetic wide brush for painting the main areas of the door and a smaller brush for the finer details. Make sure you paint in the same direction throughout the majority of the painting.
Once you’ve applied the first coat, make sure you leave it to dry for an appropriate amount of time, usually 4 - 6 hours for most top-quality paints. Then you can apply a second coat - you may need a third coat, but for most weatherproof paints you could stick to 2 coats, but if you’re painting a rather bold colour then a third coat can add to your door’s new look!
After you’ve done painting, clean up any of the edges and marvel at the work you’ve done! Good job!
Handling small DIY jobs can be easy with the help of us at Lawsons who have a huge range of paints and tools to get you started on your decorating products ready to get you started.
