What You Should Know When Choosing Interior Doors

A look at interior doors: choose wisely.
 

They have a lot of aesthetic weight but also help to insulate the house acoustically and thermally. To choose the right door you have to know materials, openings, measurements, finishes ...

Changing the interior doors of the house will make it completely renovated. The doors are a very effective element when updating the decoration . It seems that they do not influence or we do not see them and, nevertheless, with their style and finish we can give an extra style to the interior. Doors, frames and moldings can enhance a modern, minimalist, rustic , baroque effect ... and, of course, improve the acoustic and thermal insulation of our house. They also favor the distribution and organization of space and make us gain meters. Have you thought they contributed so much? This is what you should know to choose interior doors.

How to choose interior doors? Types of openings

The type of opening of an interior door will be conditioned by the space you have. The most common is to opt for folding doors, but there are other opening systems that allow us to gain meters and promote visual continuity. Depending on the reform you are facing, you can consider a change in the dimension of the door or the system.

- Folding doors

They can be blind or incorporate some rectangular or several glass, a circular opening ... With them you "lose" the opening path of the leaf. Ideally, they should be open to a wall . There are them with hinges that are visible or invisible (these details affect the price).

- Sliding doors

They can be seen or hidden. The first slide on guides and a wall that must be completely clear to accommodate the leaf when it is open. The concealed sliding doors are embedded in the partition and are not visible. In this way you can support a piece of furniture on the wall where the door is "inserted". The guides can be visible and decorative - common in the case of sliding doors that are visible - or almost invisible (on the ceiling or on the floor).

Keep in mind that a sliding door grants approximately 1.5 m² compared to a conventional opening door . So they are ideal for small spaces where their location will be noticed, such as a toilet where you will not have to close the hinged door to unfold through it.

- Folding doors

Its opening and closing is bellows type. It is an economical option when there is no space to open a sash or to "hide" a sash from a slide. The material is usually plastic and can be blind or with openings in the elements that make up the sheet.

There are also pivot-opening doors , although interior doors are less common. They need a lot of space to open, they are very showy (almost majestic) and it is usually used in large doors, hence they are reserved for access doors . And swing opening , generally used in kitchens because they favor opening in any direction with just a slight push. Of course, the space covered by the leaf must be clear on each side of the door and it must be taken into account that the door continues to move after entering or leaving.

In addition, the doors, whatever they are, can be single or double . In the latter case, the door can be formed - depending on the space of the opening to be covered - by two leaves of the same size or by a narrower and a conventional one. And you can opt for a blind door or one with glass windows -transparent or translucent- rectangular in shape, with several squares as panels, a circle ... These openings allow light to be distributed from one room to another.

The finish of the doors

Wooden doors can be solid (much more insulating, robust and expensive as they are of higher quality) or hollow. The choice will depend on the use of the house (a house used as a habitual residence is not the same as one for rent ) and the budget you have. Regarding the visible part of the interior door, the finish that can be seen, the doors are:

- Painted

In plain in any color or in imitation of the drawing of the wood, for example.

- Plated

It is an ultra-thin wood veneer or board that is placed on the door and can be made of natural or varnished wood veneer.

- Lacquered

The number of layers of lacquer a door has determines its quality (the more layers, generally 3, the more quality the interior door has and the higher its price). The finish is satin or matte and you can choose from a wide color chart.

- Other materials

There are very inexpensive doors made of MDF boards on which a sheet of vinyl-like paper is placed that imitates the finish of other materials; They are made of PVC or glass (in this case the ideal is for the door to be made of 8-10 mm thick tempered safety glass). Think that a glass door is visually light and lets the light spread from one room to another.

Remember that non-glass doors can be smooth or incorporate recesses, patterns, moldings ... this will depend on the style you want to achieve. The recesses and motifs make the designs more expensive but they also contribute. The moldings are adapted to modern or classic styles. An interesting way to transform a smooth interior door that you already have installed is to incorporate free moldings . You can also paint the doors yourself, ask a company to lacquer them to change your color and replace the knob, handle or handle with a new one (in this case, you should choose a design that adapts to the existing one so that they do not seen the holes). The finish of the handle and that of the hinges must be consistent.

Interior door flaps or jambs

The jambs are the slats that frame the door and make up the frame of it. They usually go in the same finish as the door. They can be smooth or shaped. The meeting in the upper corners of the jambs can be straight (reserved for more modern style finishes) or at an angle. And there are also doors that dispense with the jambs around wood that are much more integrated into the wall . The finish is clean. These are sheets flush with the wall. Many times this effect is used to paint the interior door in the same color as the front and thus create a practically smooth surface (a feeling of spaciousness is gainedin sight). When changing interior doors, it is advisable to change the pre-frame or pre-frame, which is the wooden structure that is placed between the partition and the door.

The measurements of the interior doors

You can actually make an interior door of the size you want if you have no budget problem to order a special sheet. The usual thing is to use standard measures. In the case of folding doors, there are common measurements ranging from 62.5 cm to 82.5 cm . The usual height of an interior door is 2.03 m. If the door is double-leafed, the total width ranges from 1.25 to 1.45 m.

In the case of a sliding door, the standard measurements may vary slightly although they are quite similar. Of course, for a 70 cm wide leaf the total space you need is 1.53 m to open the leaf.