Hi everyone!

We are doing home remodeling and cannot make a decision about interior doors.

If we decide to go with solid wood doors, should we pick white color or stain them? We want to make sure it will add warm feel to the house but at the same time we don't want to make the rooms darker...

If we decide to go with stained doors, should all doors within one room match?
In our master bedroom we have 2 closet doors (regular door and sliding door), entrance door, and the door to the bathroom. If we decide to go with stained doors, should all doors in the bedroom, including the sliding closet door, match? or can the sliding door for example be white?

There are so many options: wood vs composite, stained vs white, white vs wood trim, etc that it seems like we will never make a decision...

Thank you very much!

 

Welcome to the forums! Much will depend on whether you will be replacing the entire door units or just the slabs. How is your trim presently finished? Stain, or paint? If the majority of your trim, base, crown, windows are painted, my opinion would be to paint them to match existing trim colors. I should think everything in a room should match or coordinate with each other.

Personally I like 6 panel solid pine doors. They have the feel of a real door as opposed to hollow core (Premdor) models. Yep, you guessed it, they cost more.

 

I prefer masonite doors if they are to be painted. They paint better than pine and don't have any issues with the panels expanding and contracting. As noted, pine doors are a better door than masonite and they can stain/finish out nicely. Because they aren't white and the stain can seep into the joint, the expansion/contraction of the panels is pretty much a non issue. The stain doesn't have to be dark, in fact you could just apply poly - it all depends on the look you are after.

IMO it looks best if all the doors are similar although there are no set rules.

 

Thanks for your suggestions! We decided to go with solid wood doors and stain them. Since we are going to replacing the entire door units throughout the house, we will make sure all doors match. The trim will be replaced as well but I think we are going to go with white color for the trim which will match the windows. I hope it will look good!

 

I've painted a lot of homes where the doors were stained/poly'd and the woodwork painted - should look fine.

 

terx101 -

It is all about personal preferences. I painted all my trim in the lower level white (satin). The doors, including bifolds in untrimmed (drywall) closets. All the rooms 2 or even 3 colors of gray ranging from a dark charcoal (with some brown) to a medium taupe to a light taupe. I tried full black doors, but they were a little stark because of the outdoor color and natural lighting that varied seasonally - white(winter), tan/brown (fall and early spring) and green (summer). Because of that, I went to a dark charcoal (some brown) on all doors and at least one wall in every space. I discovered outdoor lighting can have a huge influence on the interior, especially with large sliding doors.

I found that brushed aluminum mini-blinds can almost disappear during the days when adjusted properly (if not raised totally) and can give a very clean appearance when totally closed at night at -20F when they cut off all radiant heat loss that windows cannot do.

I also picked a dark charcoal with a small amount of brown in it to soften the impact with the modern oak furniture.

Just a personal experience.

Dick