Door selection can impact the way your house looks and feels on the interior and exterior. They vary in size, shape, colour and materials, but much more significant than their decor impact, doors must meet local building code criteria and conditions. The caliber of the door determines how well it provides physical and visual privacy — and also in the case of exterior doors — house security. They don’t all work exactly the same approach to satisfy this purpose, as some doors swing, some slide, some fold and some even revolve.

Exterior Doors

The main door to your home needs to be protected. This needs a solid core door that normally consists of wood, metal or metallic with a laminated surface. Exterior doors have to pass impact and insulation tests. Local building codes — which can vary slightly by jurisdiction — generally require a minimum height of 80 inches to get the main entry. You seldom find any type but a hinged door in the main entry of a house, often designed with windows or inset panels for decoration. Dutch doors, doorways split horizontally into two independently swinging halves, add a quaint touch to any entryway, but are usually reserved for passages that access the backyard or other personal locations.

Interior Passage Doors

The doors that separate rooms within a house aren’t as heavy duty as entrance doors, as most of them are hollow core, typically consisting of a cardboard honeycomb covered with a thin plywood skin. Although builders usually conform to the 80-inch peak standard, building codes are more lenient with interior doors, and some are shorter. Interior doors typically run between 28 and 32 inches wide, and they don’t have to swing. Pocket doors, for example, slide in an overhead track and also insert into a pocket in the wall next to the doorway.

Closet Doors

Local building codes usually don’t put many restrictions on closet doors, so you have more alternatives. In addition to hollow-core swinging doors and pocket doors, then you can choose bi-fold doors — planks combined with hinges and mounted on overhead monitors that bend open to a single or both sides for cupboards. The doors fold just like accordions when you open them, and also manufacturers offer afterward with louvered or hollow-core panels. Bypass doors are just another closet door option; they contain of louvered or hollow-core panels mounted on parallel tracks so that one slides supporting the other. Unlike doors that are crocheted, bypass doors are often mounted between a bottom and top track system.

Specialty Doors

The entry into your patio or deck isn’t a standard exterior entryway, and the doors to them are usually tempered, insulated glass set in a hardwood, metal or plastic frame. A sliding door is 1 option; it may have two sliding panels or one that slides and one that’s fixed. French doors, a set of swinging glass-inset doors, offer another. A door that leads from the house into an attached garage, need to meet the fire rating criteria found in the construction code. Access into the garage along with your automobiles need sectional doors, broken up into horizontal panels and mounted in an overhead track — or tilting doors — usually a single panel that pivots horizontally to close and open.

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