Wiki: Door

[meow2222]

If John doesn't mind using this....

NT

What should I be looking for when purchasing interior doors? I need a > mixture of glazed and plain.

Depends what you are trying to achieve. Cheap egg box doors will fill the gap and keep the draft out, but look pretty lame.

Slightly posher egg box ones come in various styles of "panel" layout. Look a bit better. Still not much copy for a quality feel or for reducing sound transmission.

Real softwood for something to be painted that will look authentic and do a better job of keeping sound transmission down. Knotty pine carries more risk of warp than clear.

Engineered wood are quite a good all round option. Real hardwood faces,but stuck onto a MDF or similar mad made core. Hence dimensionally stable, and unlikely to warp or crack. Much better noise isolation.

Real hardwood if you want to spend the money.

Mid priced fire doors can be quite a cost effective way of getting a dense heavy door.

Used doors from architectural salvage yards are also an option.

[John Rumm]

help yourself... might need a bit of fleshing out.

Must admit my attitude to doors has evolved a bit over time. I grew up in a house with traditional solid softwood Victorian 4 panel doors. Looked nice and did an adequate job. Moved into one with fake panelled egg box ones. Did not looks as good and felt rather lightweight, but other than that worked ok and I never felt the urge to replace them. Moved into a place with solid hardwood six panel doors. They look nice (which is no surprise), but the pleasant benefit is the sound attenuation is so much better than the others. Close one, and the world outside mostly goes away ;-)

So with hindsight, I would go for the heavy solid door.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Another comment - if you're going to paint panel doors, start with one-piece molded fakes, because if you paint a real one, the paint will jam the panels in the frame, which then split in half when they inevitably shrink. (Varnish can have the same effect.)

[meow2222]

Its quite a small risk. Does the same risk exist with these lightweight eggbox ones, or is there always no differential movement? I'm not very familiar with them.

NT

[John Rumm]

Our hardwood panelled doors are varnished / stained. The ones on the airing cupboard, and one on a shower room have actually got splits on the smaller top panels - so it can certainly happen.

Not really - they are typically like a vacuum formed and textured single piece hardboard panel on each side, and then cardboard lattice glued between them with softwood strips round the edges and for the lock block.

So the man made material is relatively stable anyway, and there are no places where there is supposed to be a floating raised panel anyway.