Cost to hang a door, and why two quotes can look nothing alike

The five versions of hanging a door

Almost every enquiry falls into one of these, and each one carries a different amount of work.

• Rehanging the existing door after it has dropped or started catching. Least work, often under an hour.
• New leaf into a sound existing frame. Trimming, hinge recesses, latch and handle.
• New leaf into an old frame that is out of square. Scribing the leaf to the opening takes real time.
• New door and new lining, with architrave to make good afterwards.
• New opening formed in a stud wall, lined and doored. This is joinery plus building work.

What is inside the labour figure

A door is never simply hung. It is measured, trimmed on all four edges to leave consistent gaps, chiselled for hinges, cut for the latch, drilled for the handle, checked for swing clearance over the floor covering, then adjusted once it has settled.

Older properties in Kent are the usual reason for extra hours. Frames in Victorian terraces and cottages are rarely square, so the leaf has to be scribed rather than dropped straight in. Nobody can price that from a photograph.

Materials and ironmongery move the number more than people expect

Two identical looking doors can sit a long way apart in cost, and the hardware often accounts for the difference between a job that feels solid and one that rattles within a year.

• Hollow core versus solid core: solid feels and sounds better and takes longer to work.
• Primed white versus real timber veneer you intend to finish yourself.
• Fire rated sets, which include the leaf, seals, hinges and closer as a specified assembly.
• Hinge quality and count. Heavier doors need three hinges, sometimes four.
• Latches, locks and handles, where the spread from budget to good is wide.

Why doing several doors at once costs less per door

Most of the setup cost is in arriving, protecting the area, unloading tools and clearing up. Spread that across six doors and the per door figure drops noticeably compared with a single call out.

If you are planning to change doors room by room over a couple of years, it is usually worth doing the floor in one visit instead.

Questions to ask before you accept a quote

Check whether the price includes the doors themselves or labour only, whether handles and latches are supplied, whether old doors are taken away, and whether making good around a new lining is covered. Most gaps between quotes are scope gaps rather than value gaps.

Questions we're asked about this