Upgrading Your Doors This Spring? 20 Types You Should Know Before You Reno

By: Karmon Sanders

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Whether you’re upgrading your interior doors, exterior doors, decorative doors, security doors, or anything else, it’s important to get to know the design elements and features that make each type of door unique. This way, you can choose the door that will suit your space, and your needs, best.

These are the most common types of doors and what makes them different.

How to Choose the Right Door for Your Home

Choosing the right type of door for your home starts with identifying which features are important for you.

Maybe you need a door to span a wide opening that can open completely to join two spaces. Maybe you need a door that can slide along the wall, as floor space is limited and won’t allow for a hinged door. Maybe you need something that will allow airflow into the space even when shut.

Different doors are designed with different features to serve different purposes. While it may be tempting to choose your doors solely based on looks, it’s important to learn the features that will determine each door’s performance in your application as well.

01. Hinged Door

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Common application: Interior, exterior, residential, commercial

A hinged door is any door that opens and closes via a hinge attached to a frame. Hinged doors are among the first types of doors ever made and remain the most common doors to this day.

Most modern hinged doors are purchased as “pre-hung” which designates a door already mounted to a frame via hinges. The installer simply installs the entire unit into the rough opening.

02. Solid Wood Door

 The Spruce / Sarah Crowley

Common application: Exterior doors, front doors, premium construction

Solid wood doors are doors crafted with solid wood throughout, though not usually one single piece of wood. While also used in interior applications, solid doors are the standard for exterior doors.

Tip: Solid wood doors shouldn’t be confused with solid-core doors, which are doors with a wood fiberboard core and an outer veneer. The use of fiberboard as the core cuts the cost down and makes the door more dimensionally stable, but doesn’t offer the same resell value as solid wood.

03. Hollow-Core Door

 Getty Images / Catherine Falls Commercial

Common application: Interior doors, bedrooms, closets, pantries, hallways, budget-friendly construction

Hollow-core doors consist of a thin outer layer often made of plywood or fiberglass and an inner core of cardboard or plastic. Not only are hollow-core doors significantly cheaper than solid doors, but they also perform well in interior applications where solid wood construction isn’t a must.

Hollow-core doors are also quicker to install than solid wood doors, as they are significantly lighter. One of the biggest downsides to hollow-core doors is the noise bleed, which is notably worse than solid wood or solid-core doors.

04. Sliding Door

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Common application: Patios, indoor-outdoor living areas

Sliding doors open and close by sliding horizontally on a track. The most common application for sliding doors is glass sliding doors leading to an outdoor space.

Nowadays, many sliding doors are built with multiple tracks, allowing several panels to slide over top of one another. This allows the homeowners to completely slide the panels out of the way, seamlessly joining an outdoor space with an indoor space.

05. French Door

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Common application: Interior, exterior, home offices

French doors typically consist of a pair of operable hinged doors with glass panes from top to bottom. While French doors aren’t exclusively double doors, it is most common to see this installation, so the term has become synonymous with double doors with glass panes.

06. Double Door

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Common application: Interior, exterior, wide openings

Double doors primarily consist of two hinged doors in one opening. While not exclusive to the aforementioned French doors, French doors are commonly installed as double doors.

The obvious benefit of having two doors instead of one is the wider opening created when both doors are open. For exterior doors, this can greatly aid in moving things in and out efficiently. For interior doors, double doors can open to allow two spaces to flow naturally together.

07. Pivot Door

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Common application: Exterior, front door, luxury homes, modern exteriors

A pivot door is a door that pivots on a vertical axis, via hardware stretching into the ceiling and floor rather than on hinges or sliders.

Pivot doors have become synonymous with luxurious, modern homes and are typically much larger than a standard door. This is because the use of pivots rather than hinges offers superior strength and support to the door, allowing for a much heavier door than could be supported by standard hinges.

08. Bifold Door

 

Peony + Honey

Common application: Closets, laundry rooms, room dividers

A bifold door is a door consisting of two panels hinged together in the center. This allows the doors to fold neatly out of the way, conserving floor space. The doors typically ride along an upper track.

While there are numerous applications for bi-fold doors, they’re commonly used for wide closet openings or spaces that can’t accommodate a full-size swinging door.

09. Accordion Door

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Common application: Closets, room dividers, wide openings, laundry rooms, indoor-outdoor living spaces

Accordion doors are doors with several panels that fold in on themselves. Unlike bi-fold doors, accordion doors can fold several times, which makes them ideal for wide openings separating two living spaces, where the user may want to occasionally join the spaces.

10. Barn Door

 Trinette Reed / Stocksy

Common application: Covering uncased openings, rooms with limited floorspace, farmhouse-style homes, industrial homes

A barn door is a door panel hanging from a track suspended above the opening, allowing it to slide open. This is perfect for applications that don’t have ample floor space for a hinged door or as an aesthetic feature.

A major benefit of barn doors is that they require no door jamb and very little hardware, making them an unintrusive option for quickly and inexpensively adding privacy to an existing uncased or cased opening.

11. Panel Door

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Common application: Interior, exterior, residential

A panel door is a door that is constructed out of several panels of wood rather than one solid piece. Not only does this construction method cut down on the cost of the door, but it can also increase the door’s dimensional stability while adding beautiful aesthetic detail.

12. Pocket Door

 The Spruce / Leticia Almeida

Common application: Spaces with limited floor space

A pocket door is a door that slides into a pocket inside the wall. Their ability to completely slide out of the way makes them popular in spaces where floor space is limited. Once a popular home feature, pocket doors are less common today due to their involved installation and difficult maintenance level.

The sliding barn door has replaced the pocket door in some ways, as the exposed hardware and easy installation are appealing to many homeowners.

13. Dutch Door

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Common application: Exterior, kitchens, mudrooms

A Dutch door is a door consisting of two separate pieces, split down the middle horizontally. The primary purpose of a Dutch door is to provide an opening for light and airflow while keeping pets and children in or out.

Dutch doors are mostly popular in rural areas, in farmhouse design, and even in barns themselves.

14. Storm Door

 ntm1909 / Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0

Common application: Exterior, regions with harsh winters

A storm door is an exterior door installed on the outside of the primary door, which offers additional protection from the elements. Most storm doors feature removable or sliding glass panels with screens to allow for ventilation in warmer weather.

Storm doors are often confused with screen doors, which are simply full- or half-screen panel doors used solely for ventilation and don’t offer the same protection as storm doors.

15. Flush Door

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Common application: Low-budget interiors, minimalistic interiors, closets

A flush door is a door with a completely flat, smooth profile absent of any molding, panels, or other decorative elements. While flush doors are generally associated with low-cost options and hollow-core doors, they are often preferred for minimalistic interiors.

16. Roman Door

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Common application: Interior, exterior, traditional

Roman doors are known for their distinctive 2-panel design, with a lower square panel and an upper panel with an arched top. Though a true Roman door is traditionally a pivot door, modern Roman doors are most often mounted on hinges.

17. Bypass Door

 The Sweetest Digs

Common application: Closets, laundry rooms, wide openings

A bypass door is a set of sliding doors in which the doors slide over one another when opening and closing. They’re beneficial for covering wide openings, especially when wall space on either side of the opening is limited, as the doors can pass over one another to open fully.

18. Colonial Door

 Romana Lilic / Getty Images

Common application: Interior, exterior, residential

Colonial doors are solid wood doors with recessed panels. Out of all doors, these are the most commonly used type for exterior doors, primarily at the front entrance of the home. When used as front doors, Colonial doors are often installed as both single doors and double doors.

19. Louver Door

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Common application: Bathrooms, closets

A louver door is a door that features horizontal angled slats that allow air and minimal light passage while protecting visual privacy. Louvered doors are ideal for spaces that require airflow when the door is closed, such as bathrooms and closets.

Tip: Most bi-fold closet doors are louvered to allow air to circulate, keeping clothes fresh.

20. Tudor Door

 The Spruce / Sarah Crowley

Common application: Tudor-style homes, front doors, cottages

Tudor doors are characterized mainly by their arched top that often resolves in a subtle centered point. They often feature wrought iron, embossed panels, and other decorative elements, and are often left as raw wood stained in a rich, dark hue rather than painted.

5 Types of Door Materials

While many of the door types listed above are limited to certain materials, others are available in various materials, which could alter the door’s performance in certain applications:

• Solid Wood. Since doors became commonplace, wood has been the go-to material. Still today, wood is a popular door material. While it does have its downsides, including warping, rotting, cracking, and other decay, it’s hard to duplicate the natural beauty of wood.
• Glass. Naturally, the benefit of incorporating glass into door construction is its transparency, allowing light transfer and visibility through a closed door. From small windows to full-length panes, glass has become integral to residential and commercial door construction.
• Steel. Steel is considered one of the best door materials for its supreme durability and low maintenance. However, one of the main benefits of using steel for door construction is the increased level of security the material can offer.
• Fiberglass. Many modern doors presumed to be wood are actually made of fiberglass. Unlike wood, fiberglass doors won’t rot, crack, and decay, and require much less upkeep to maintain their looks and quality.
• uPVC. Unplasticized polyvinyl chloride, better known as uPVC, is a widely used building material commonly used for doors and windows. It’s low maintenance, easy to clean, energy-efficient, and highly durable.

FAQ

• What is the most common type of door for homes?
  • Hinged doors are the most common type of door used in homes and other residential applications. Among hinged doors, panel doors are the most commonly used in both interior and exterior applications.
• What door type is the cheapest?
  • The cheapest type of door you can buy is a hollow-core door, specifically those made with MDF (medium-density fiberboard) and Masonite. However, hollow-core doors are exclusively used in interior applications. For exterior applications, the most economical option is a steel door.
• What is the easiest door type to install in a home?
  • By far the easiest type of door to install in a home is a sliding barn door, as the process consists of simply mounting a level track above an opening and placing the door on the track. For more privacy and security, a pre-hung door is fairly easy to install with minimal tools and experience.