Will White Doors Ever Make A Comeback?

When it comes to entrance doors, we seem to have come full circle haven’t we? First came timber doors, in all the various traditional styles. People painted them different colours, reds, blacks, blues, greens and so on. Then PVCu came about…

A white invasion

In a similar way to the White Walkers from Games of Thrones, white PVCu doors invaded the UK in a massive way. They never really looked like their timber counterparts, but they took off in a big way. The low maintenance aspect was a big selling point, and before long they had taken over every street and almost every house.

They were fine for the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s. But as composite doors became established in the market and started to show that doors could be something other than white, the dominance of plain white door started to unravel.

Fast forward to 2015 and there are many installers that are now struggling to sell white doors in the numbers they would just ten years ago. Speaking from experience, I would say that the ratio of coloured doors to white doors is around 80/20. The ratio of composite doors and engineered doors vs PVCu panel doors is around 99/1.  The door landscape really has changed, and it’s hard to imagine that it could ever return to the good old days of white.

Colour here to stay?

I think the advance of colour in the entrance door market is happening in two phases. The first phase has been introduced by the composite door market which has made popular bold colours like black, blue, green and red. If you look on your typical UK street you should see a few doors of those colours.

The colour market is now maturing and with it more traditional colours are coming to the fore. Pale greens, creams, greys, blue and other heritage style colours are becoming more and more popular with home owners, especially with doors, but also now for windows.

It is this maturing that is the second phase. Early colours have allowed the public to get used to the idea that they could have something other than white, and has opened the door to the whole colour spectrum. This is the phase that will cement colour firmly back in the door market for good.

Could white ever become as popular as it once was? I guess it could. If the industry has changed now then it’s possible for it to change again. But it’s highly unlikely. Homes have had white doors for decades. Why would home owners stick with white again, knowing that it’s very easy to have a door in literally any colour they wanted? They wouldn’t.

So yes, colour is here to stay. And whilst that will mean the country’s streets will become more vibrant and colourful, it does pose the industry’s syscos and fabricators with an important question: how many colours should we be stocking?

Supply and demand

It’s a serious consideration. Foiling companies like Renolit are already expanding their offerings to accommodate more colours previously only available if you had your door sprayed. But how far do they go?

You can’t make a foil for every RAL colour on the chart, it’s just not feasible for many reasons. But there are certain colours that will gain popularity and will have to make the jump from sprayed finished to foil finish. So fabricators are going to have to make choices on how many colours they are going to have to stock in the future.

Either way, our industry has a long, colourful future ahead of us, which will make selling and installing our products that bit more interesting for us, and more exciting for the home owner.

What is the most popular colour of door you sell or produce? Let us know via the comments section below!