Informed colour choices
Ben Aspinall, head of technology & marketing at DoorCo, shares the latest insight on door colour trends and explains more about how the company delivers innovative colour services to its customers.
Monitoring data and being aware of trends is an important role we play as a supplier. We have to deliver products and services that our customers need to enable them to offer the very latest in door design.
Technology is a fundamental part of our business and my role as head of technology & marketing gives an interesting perspective into both camps. In marketing, we’re closer to the action. We’re supporting customers with design and coming up with new concepts to help them stand out from the crowd with their brochures and other marketing collateral. We’re constantly keeping abreast of what the market is doing, both within the industry and downstream with consumers.
Take the Pink Door Collection as an example. During lockdown, pink doors started to appear on influencer’s posts on Instagram and we could really see this becoming a trend. Simultaneously, we were exploring some new glass designs, so we accelerated the project to create some hero designs that championed pink.
We then pinpointed three coordinating pink door shades, collaborated with Brisant to feature the Rose Gold Sweet hardware range and created a collection, which remains as popular as ever.
Data is power
While it’s great to be innovative, we also need to be mindful of what’s selling and what’s not. This is where the technology side of my role comes in useful as I can make sure we’re producing the data that can help make informed decisions. We’ve developed a system that reports on design, glazing, colour and even the final combinations.
What the data tells us
Although we often talk about homeowners making bolder choices and we offer bright and bold colours in our Paint collection to support this, grey still tops the door colour charts.
Anthracite grey is as popular as ever, but it’s also joined by differing shades like slate, agate, shadow and silver grey. However, a new dimension is having anthracite grey on both sides of the door.
Colouring the inside of doors to better suit the interior design of the home is a definite growing trend but the choice of anthracite grey on both sides is interesting. You may imagine more subtle shades would suit many homes but strong colour like anthracites indicates the front door is becoming more of a statement piece for inside the home, and not just externally.
New dimension of grey
DoorCo offers a unique colour range of Patina stains which is designed to emphasise the grained detail of the Monza II door. The stone grey and Alaska grey shades are becoming increasingly popular, indicating the demand for modern stained doors and the handcrafted look. The Monza II Patina doors form part of our Designer door collection for those looking for something extra.
Blue rivals grey
The other traditionally popular door colour is blue, and this hasn’t waned either. What is interesting here is that while the most popular greys are strong colours, the trending blues are more delicate. Numbers of Cotswold, Wedgewood and Nimbus doors produced this year are rivalling the greys.
Better service
Delivering innovation in colour is great, but we must also be able to service the choice we offer our customers.
DoorCo is currently undergoing a project that will further enhance and future-proof our prepping services – whether that’s a fully prepped door or the Paint No Prep service we offer to our fabricator customers.
Applying lean and world class manufacturing principles to the manufacturing shopfloor space has led to a redistribution of tools into three self-managing manufacturing cells with specific disciplines: standard doors, painted/stained doors, and glazing. The plan will significantly reduce bottlenecks in key areas like painting and see an 80% reduction in travel for the door itself.
Not only will this open up capacity, reduced transportation and motion also means less touch points for potential damage to the door during manufacturing.
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. Working with them as well as our market data means we can adapt and react quickly. So, whether it’s something small like introducing a new colour, or something big like strategic investment in our business, our customers can rely on DoorCo to help them deliver the latest trends.
