Whether you’ve just purchased your fiberglass door or you’re a longtime owner of one, your choice in materials was a smart decision. Do you still like the way that fiberglass door looks? A quality fiberglass door manufacturer like Plastpro offers a wide range of colors, sizes, and accessory options during the initial purchasing process, but tastes change and it’s possible to change your door to match.
What if you wanted to switch things up by changing the color of your door, adding accessories, or taking another avenue toward entryway reinvention? Custom fiberglass doors can be a great way to make a striking statement and increase your home’s curb appeal, and the options for front door transformation range from easy and cheap to involved and expensive.
Can You Modify a Fiberglass Door?
If your first feeling is trepidation when considering fiberglass door modifications, that’s understandable. You most likely have more experience interacting with or working with materials like metal and wood, so you have some idea of how doors made with each will react to projects that change their appearance. Luckily, fiberglass doors are just as customizable and can be tailored to suit your tastes through DIY home improvement projects, as well as any customization options provided by your door manufacturer.
In addition to their fully-featured lineup of fiberglass doors that touch on different design styles, textured looks, and popular colors, Plastpro offers both trimmable options and doors that are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. These options allow homeowners to fit fiberglass doors into unorthodox entryways, making non-traditional door sizes a non-issue.
Can I Paint My Fiberglass Front Door?
Adding a new coat of paint is one of the most common customized front door projects. Completely changing the color scheme of a large chunk of your home’s front façade is a great way to make a big impact with a single job. It’s an established way of breathing new life into steel or wood doors, but homeowners with fiberglass doors can enjoy the benefits of a new paint job, too.
Something like a freshly painted fiberglass front door can help tie an entryway into an already established theme—or help establish a new theme from which the rest of the house can be reshaped. Either way, there’s a high chance you’ll experience a bump in curb appeal from the project, as well as other important benefits that come from a door refresh.
Changing a door’s appearance is an extremely useful motivation for undergoing a repainting project, and if all you care about is that the newly customized front door matches your personal preference, it’s reason enough to begin the process. However, adding paint doesn’t just give the door’s aesthetic properties a new lease on life. The new coat on a door is like a new winter coat for us, reinforcing the door against the elements and helping to fill in spaces where coverage may not be as strong as it was before the coating was applied.
Speaking of coating, color isn’t the only way to switch up your door’s look. If you have a fiberglass door that’s textured to appear as wood, you can stain the fiberglass just as you would a wooden slab door. Staining can make a door lighter or darker, give the appearance of more or less woodgrain, and extend the life of your door by offering added protection and a bump in integrity just like adding a coat of paint can.
To prepare a fiberglass front door for painting or staining, you’ll want to first remove any paint or staining currently on the door. To do this—and to eventually paint the door itself—it’s easiest to take it off its hinges and move it to a safe area away from the home where you can work with chemicals.
Needless to say, that means the family and any pets should be prepared to be without a front door for several hours. After you’ve removed any paint or stain, sand the door. Be sure to wear gloves, goggles, and a mask, as you’re working with fiberglass. Be sure to check out this how-to guide for tips on applying your new paint or stain!
1. Adding Glass Inserts
A classic way to give an entry door more personality is to outfit it with glass inserts. Glass acts as a juxtaposition to whichever material your front door is made of—unless it’s predominantly glass, then that’d be kind of redundant. Designers often use decorative glass to create a more unique customized front door look, and Plastpro offers a wide range of decorative glass options for use in their custom fiberglass doors.
Plastpro’s choices for glass inserts include several patterns that feature caming—those black lines that create shapes and designs in decorative glass. The design elements on Plastpro’s glass insert options create welcoming geometric patterns, fancy upscaled designs, and intricately modern takes on the idea of decoration.
In addition to caming, Plastpro’s decorative glass features can be textured and clouded to resemble something more tactile than a regular window pane-style glass door insert. If you choose to outfit your fiberglass door with glass inserts, there is a wide breadth of options available that service your chosen architectural style.
2. Changing the Hardware
In today’s world, there are a ton of ways to ascertain the time—your computer, your phone, the tickers at the bottom of various television stations—but despite the relative accessibility we have to an accurate depiction of the day’s current progress, a lot of us still choose to wear watches. It’s just as important to outfit your door with fashionable, functional accessories as it is to outfit yourself with them, and it can be just as fun to use them to express your household’s personality as it is to express your own.
You could use large, ornate door knockers, knobs, handles, and hinges, or you could go for a more subdued, subtle look. You could choose to use metal that looks dark or shiny, smooth or textured, refined or raw. Whatever your decision, it should complement the door and not clash with it. That way, none of your efforts are wasted and you’re presenting a uniform look that takes full advantage of your chosen hardware. A solid accessory-to-door pairing will do wonders for your curb appeal and allow you to expand that aesthetic to the rest of your entryway and, if you choose, the remainder of your home’s exterior.
3. Selecting Unique Panel Designs
Choosing an option with paneling is a great way to add depth, texture, shadow, and dimension to your front door. Almost every Plastpro series offers doors with paneling, and whether it’s the classically clean one-panel door, a two-panel door with the divide either even or off-center, or one of the more elaborate designs, doors with panels look like they belong on homes styled in most architectural aesthetics. If you want to mix it up, you can even choose door designs where panels are further sectioned off, creating decorative doors that feature three panels, six panels, or more! These options can be further expanded with the addition of glass panels that are usually swapped out for paneled sections of a door. The sizes on glass panels can be incredibly customizable, too.
4. Adding Decorative Accessories
Now that we’ve discussed functional door accessories, let’s take a closer look at door decorations. While these accessories aren’t meant to perform a specific task, they can go just as far in establishing a look or garnering more curb appeal for your customized fiberglass doors. Each of the below decorative options are available at Plastpro.
Speakeasies were named after the secretive Prohibition-era gathering places they were meant to protect. Today, congregating to responsibly share a drink or two isn’t illegal, but that doesn’t mean the speakeasy has lost its cool factor. Most speakeasies that can be purchased and installed aren’t functional because they don’t need to be—after all, cutting a rather large hole to make one operational can hurt the integrity of the door and its ability to keep out cold or heat.
Hinge straps can be installed on a door to give it a regal or rustic look, depending on other contributing factors. They originate from doors where self-closing hinges brought moving parts to a halt—think saloon doors. Installable hinge straps give a homeowner the desired hinge look without actually putting the mechanism into place.
Clavos give the appearance of large nails being hammered into the door, which is a great way to add to a country-style door as much as it is a door meant to resemble that of an expensive castle or other large estate.
5. Try a New Color
As previously mentioned, if homeowners want to make the biggest impact with one project, trying a new color or stain on their fiberglass door is the answer. Now that we’ve also discussed accessories and glass inserts, utilize all customized front door options to create something unique to your liking!
The Best Custom Fiberglass Doors from Plastpro
When it comes to customization both pre- and post-delivery, fiberglass doors offer a huge range of options that can cater to almost any size, style, and aesthetic demand. Don’t just stop with installation, though—there are always new customization options to explore, so keep an open mind while remaining true to your vision!
Find a dealer today to take advantage of Plastpro’s door options and door accessories.
