Interior Door Opening Direction

You ll want the door to allow the most open space in the room when the door is open.

Interior door opening direction.

Deciding which direction a door should open is sometimes a matter of circumstance x2015 and sometimes circumstances change. An inward opening door should swing in the direction needed to provide adequate passage. If it bumps or blocks passage because of a wall barrier or other object when you open it such as a toilet or cabinet the door should swing in the opposite direction. That s the way it is normally done.

The door pulls toward you from the outside. Let s start by being inside the room inside the square and you want the door to open out into the next room. I want to place a lever handle on an interior door. If you extended the left arm then you need to order a left handed door set.

Generally when drawing interior elevations of doors windows and built in cabinetry such as in a kitchen bath or office dashed lines are used to indicate hinge location and door swings as shown in figure 7 14. Work the knob several times. If an interior door in your home is opening in a direction that doesn t work with how you want to arrange the room or if it just doesn t feel right to you you re not stuck with it. One such case is if you have a wall close to the opening.

The design of the room typically determines the left or right swing designation for doors. Screw the door on in the opposite direction using the new hinge mortises. Stand with your back against the hinge side of the frame and extend an arm in the direction you wish the door to open. Now a good rule of thumb is that you want the handle of the screen door to be on the same side as the entry door.

Now imagine if you re inside the room or outside the room. The angled dashed line near the midpoint of the door points to the hinge side. On top of that doors into reception rooms should open in such a way as to give the maximum view while entering so in the case of a door near the corner the door should open against the wall. In order to determine your door swing direction by using the diagram shown above imagine the square box is the room.

Generally interior doors will swing into the room opening towards the nearest perpendicular wall in the room. After you determine door swing direction you can use the above method to determine the hand of the door. The handle is on the left indicating a left hand door.