Door designs are often very similar among houses in a neighborhood but they don't have to be. The reason is most home building products and materials are mass produced. This saves homeowners money while reducing the number of choices you have when picking doors, windows, appliances and other home features.
Unless you live in a historic area when they've protected old buildings, their architecture and history like Portsmouth, NH or Newburyport MA, chances are you don't see a lot of historic door designs. There are similarities between door designs from houses built hundreds of years and today's popular door designs.
As many of you don't live near a city with historic houses, here are fabulous front door designs I was able to photograph during a scavenger hunt in New York City, around Washington Square Park. Many of our clues required us to learn the names of special events of people who lived in these homes many years ago and my team, while we didn't win (we came in second), had a great time.
Simple Door Designs with Great Color and Texture
Like many historic towns that lost many buildings to fires, important buildings were rebuilt with brick and stone. These materials add so much color and texture to buildings, that the house looks better with simple door designs like the ones shown here. There are two black door designs in the first house, and it's easy to tell which door is for those who live there versus the service door for deliveries.
The next photograph shows several attached brick buildings, all with white doors and windows. Notice how the window and door designs on the right are similar, while the doors and windows to the left are much simpler.
This house uses all curved window and door designs, and a mix of white and black … and these three women are my teammates on our scavenger hunt and fortunately Melissa and Claudia live in New York so they took the lead in how to get from one clue to the next.
Something fairly unique in New York City are front doors where you have to walk down a few steps to reach the door. Likely these were service entrances to the basement and now that real estate has skyrocketed in New York, these have become prime living space. This particular “stairs down to front door” has beautiful greenscapes with trees, ground cover and flower boxes.
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