Hello all,

We have an all-brick ranch house with orange/red brick and white trim. Originally, the front door/side-lights were painted all white. Then when the house was put up for sale, the home-stagers had the owners paint the entire front door area red, trim and all. This felt very dark to us, so I repainted the trim and side-lights back to white. Now, as my 10-yr-old design diva put it so well, it feels very "candy-cane."

I have seen many homes where the red/white combination works well, but it seems that in those cases, the door has much more trim around it, or the columns out front are also white. In any case, where it works, the proportion of white to red is much greater than what I ended up with. The red door also seems to work well on homes where the trim is more of an off-white or beige color. All of our gutters and windows are white, so I need to keep some trim white as well. My question is whether I should possibly paint the side-lights and garage more of a beige color to tone down the white, and/or repaint the door another color. I have considered a dark blue or purple - those would likely read as black from the road, and coordinate more with the dark look of the windows and light fixtures. Or perhaps it will be ok as is if I put more white flowering plants in the landscape?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
-Angela