Home Improvement Exterior Remodel Doors & Windows

10 Midcentury Modern Front Doors to Get the Design Look

Historically, these designs came out in post-war, retro America

Mid-century modern front entrance with wooden geometric door

The Spruce / Sarah Crowley

To bring a midcentury modern home back to its full glory, you likely need to honor the period and give it a midcentury modern-style door. The front door forms a major part of a home's facade and makes one of the first big impressions. When guests enter your gorgeous midcentury modern home, you want to set the right tone.

Read on to see replicas of midcentury modern front doors and where to buy them. Look at doors today that work nicely with homes from the midcentury period or homes that that you design to evoke that period.

What Are Midcentury Modern Front Doors?

Because front doors for suburban homes in the 1950s and 1960s were often built of lightweight materials, few original doors remain in good working condition. It doesn't help that front doors bear the brunt of weathering. Even doors built of high-quality materials suffer from the effects of rain, snow, and sunlight.

Midcentury modern front doors often have features such as:

  • Clean lines
  • Wood construction
  • Natural wood appearance
  • Window cutouts within the door
  • Sidelights

What Is a Sidelight?

Sidelights, also spelled sidelites, are stationary, narrow glass inserts featured vertically along one or both sides of the front door. They are usually part of the overall door frame assembly.

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    Doors With a Long Window Inset

    Midcentury door with a vertical inset

    The Spruce / Alyssa Vela

    Midcentury modern is known for its clean lines. Add more clean, contemporary lines with another modular shape, like a long vertical inset window running the length of the door.

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    Piet Mondrian-inspired Doors

    Mondrian-inspired rainbow glass doors

    Titoslack / Getty Images

    Contemporary artists like Piet Mondrian are like a timestamp, representing the midcentury modern era. A door that looks inspired by a midcentury contemporary artist fits perfectly with the time period.

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    Doors Akin to Frank Lloyd Wright

    Front stained glass doors

    Gillian Vann / Stocksy

    Frank Lloyd Wright is arguably one of the most famed architects to establish the definition of a midcentury modern home. Although he inspired many styles to come from that time, if you could envision a door on a Wright home, it's likely fit for a home of the era. His homes often featured stained glass features, so don't hesitate to incorporate stained glass in the door.

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    Horizontal Inset Windows

    Horizontal inset windows on a door

    The Spruce / Sarah Crowley

    This 2 1/4-inch thick solid mahogany door features the modular cutouts that were so popular for the time. If you have space on either side of the door, adding a sidelight would be like a midcentury modern one-two punch.

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  • 05 of 10

    Embrace Other Geometric Shapes

    DIY door lenz installation
    Craft Modern

    Horizontal and vertical shapes may have been more prominent, but other shapes like triangles and circles were just as fierce when intending to make a statement. Primary shapes are perfectly in sync with the midcentury modern look.

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    Pulling Together the Look

    Solid doors with ornate door pulls

    Don Stouder / Unsplash

    A simple solid door is a geometric statement in itself, one distinct rectangle. To give your front entryway a bigger declaration of its time period, give it an outstanding door pull tying together a midmodern cohesive look.

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    Sensational Sidelights

    Midcentury front door with sidelights

    Zac Gudakov / Unsplash

    Clear glass sidelights accentuate a rectangular door's shape—highlighting an entryway's lines and angles. Side windows bring more light into the home, which makes sense for the time since most homes during the era were split-level homes; hence doorways could help bring in more outside light to brighten the lower level.

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    Wood and Nature

    Solid wood midcentury modern door

    The Spruce / Sarah Crowley

    Midcentury modern embraced a style that complemented natural elements—relying heavily on wood, stone, and neutral earth tones like green, brown, gray, ocher, and gold. Solid wooden doors are a bold choice, which is easy to accessorize with unique knobs, pulls, and side windows.

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  • 09 of 10

    Midcentury Modern Colors

    Orange midcentury modern door

    The Spruce / Sarah Crowley

    You could go two ways with midcentury modern colors—earth tones or more vibrant ones. The color palette of the mid-20th century featured ocher, orange, and mustard yellow. Doors with those colors certainly make a statement quite louder than neutrals.

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    Diamond Life

    Diamond motif front door

    John Keeble / Getty Images

    Diamonds are another classic shape that crept into midcentury modern motifs, from window shapes and floor tiles to clocks and mirrors hanging on the walls. Diamond-shaped window cutouts are another popular choice if looking to evoke 1950-1960s chic.

Where to Buy Midcentury Modern-style Doors

Midcentury modern replica doors were difficult to obtain during the midcentury modern "Mad Men"-inspired craze in the mid-2000s. Door production lagged behind demand. Crestview Doors of Austin, Texas, was one of the earliest companies to recognize homeowners' avid desire for truly midcentury modern-styled doors. Crestview went out of business, but a number of other companies filled in to offer midcentury modern-style doors.

  • Therma-Tru Pulse Collection: Therma-Tru's Pulse door collection provides the feeling of a midcentury modern door created in fiberglass. Pulse Collection doors have a clean look compatible with most midcentury modern homes. Fiberglass is not period-perfect, but it is a rock-solid, weather-resistant material. Fiberglass is a worthy alternative if you're considering a steel entry door.
  • ETO Doors: ETO Doors is a huge supplier of doors chiefly to the commercial market. While not strictly copying any midcentury modern styles, some of ETO Doors' contemporary styles, with multiple horizontal rectangles set in a ladder-like fashion, can easily be interpreted as fitting into the general midcentury modern design scheme.
  • Borano: Borano is a Florida-based company that is more associated with high-end hand-carved doors for homes that have a European country style. Yet Borano also has a modern section with a number of doors that could grace a home from the 1950s or 1960s without being too much of an anachronism.
  • Doors By Decora: Doors by Decora is known for producing super-elaborate beveled, leaded-glass, solid hardwood doors. The company also has a Contemporary line that will suit most midcentury modern homes. This Montgomery Alabama-based company custom-manufactures its doors. 
  • Simpson Door Company: Simpson Door sells a handful of spot-on wood doors perfect for midcentury modern homes. All of Simpson's doors in this area are categorized in their Contemporary section and come in Douglas fir, cherry, walnut, and sapele mahogany. Simpson's Doormagination website tool lets you picture any door, in any species of wood and any glass superimposed on your own house, so you'll know what you're buying before it's installed.