The Complete Guide to Doors
Doors are one of the most fundamental elements of any home — and one of the most overlooked. They define privacy, control airflow, manage sound, and set the aesthetic tone of a room. Despite their ubiquity, doors involve a surprising amount of nuance: the right choice depends on location, traffic, budget, and style.
This guide covers everything from selecting the right door for a specific application to removing, trimming, hanging, and finishing it. Whether you're a homeowner tackling a first replacement or just trying to fix a door that won't close right, this guide is organized to get you to the right answer quickly.
This guide covers residential doors only. Commercial applications — fire-rated assemblies, ADA automatic openers, storefront systems — are outside its scope.
What this guide covers
Door selection
Interior vs. exterior, materials, styles, and configurations
Hardware
Knobs, levers, hinges, locks, closers, and stops
Installation
Pre-hung and slab, framing, shimming, and plumbing
Adjustment & repair
Fixing sticking, binding, gaps, and fit problems
Finishing
Painting, staining, priming, and weatherstripping
Removal
Safe removal of slabs, frames, and hardware
How this guide is organized
Most door guides bury the practical stuff. This one doesn't. The largest section — Fit & Adjustment — exists because that's where most real-world door problems live. A door that won't latch, drags on the floor, or lets in a draft isn't an installation problem; it's a fit problem, and it's fixable without starting over.
If you're here because something is already wrong, you can skip straight there. If you're starting from scratch, the sections flow in rough installation order: selection → materials → hardware → framing → installation → adjustment → finishing.
A note on skill level
The sections in this guide range from straightforward (removing a door, swapping hardware) to moderately involved (hanging a pre-hung unit, planing a sticking door). No section assumes professional experience, but some assume comfort with basic hand tools. Where a task genuinely warrants a professional — structural modifications, load-bearing walls — that's called out explicitly.
Glossary
Unfamiliar with a term? The Glossary covers the full vocabulary used throughout this guide — everything from jamb and casing to kerf and backset.