How much does it cost to replace interior doors?

Slab or prehung: the biggest factor

There are two ways to replace an interior door. A slab is just the door itself. We take the old one off the hinges, fit the new one to your existing frame, cut the hinge pockets and bore the hole for the knob. A prehung door comes already hung in its own frame. We pull out the old frame, set the new one plumb and square, and put the trim back on or run new trim.

A slab uses less material, but it takes careful fitting, and it only works if your frame is still square. In a lot of Long Island capes and high ranches, the house has settled over the years and the frames have gone a little out of line. Hang a new slab in a crooked frame and it rubs, won’t latch, or leaves a gap you can see light through. A prehung door costs more in material, but it fixes the frame problem at the same time.

The door itself

Doors range a lot. Hollow-core doors are light and common in houses built from the 1960s through the 1990s. Solid-core doors are heavier, block more sound and feel more solid when you close them. Panel style matters too: flat, two-panel shaker, six-panel, or glass. Primed doors that need painting on site are priced differently from doors that come pre-finished.

If you want quieter bedrooms or a home office where you can close the door on a call, solid-core is usually worth talking about. For a closet, hollow-core is often fine.

How many doors, and what kind

Doing a whole floor at once is usually more efficient per door than doing one or two, because the setup, trips and painting happen once. The type of door changes the work, too:

• Standard swing doors for bedrooms, baths and closets.
• Bifold and sliding closet doors, which have their own tracks and hardware.
• Pocket doors, which slide into the wall. Replacing one is simple if the frame inside the wall is good, and more work if it isn’t.
• Double doors or French doors between rooms, which take more fitting to line up in the middle.
• Odd sizes, common in older houses, which may need a custom-cut door or a reframed opening.

Trim, hardware and paint

New doors often look wrong next to old, chipped casing (the trim around the door). Many homeowners change the casing at the same time so the doors and trim match. That adds material and labor, but it’s where the finished look comes from. Hinges and knobs or levers are another line on the price. Matching finishes across every door in the house makes a bigger difference than people expect.

Then there’s paint. A primed door needs to be painted on all six sides, including the top and bottom edges, so it doesn’t soak up moisture and warp. We can paint them as part of the job, so you’re not hiring a painter after we leave.

What can add cost in older houses

A few things we sometimes find once the old door and trim come off:

• Frames that are badly out of square, which call for shimming or a prehung door.
• New flooring that’s taller than the old floor, so the new door has to be cut shorter to clear it.
• Damaged sheetrock or plaster around the frame that needs patching before new trim goes on.
• Openings that were never a standard size.

We look for these when we come out, so they’re in the written price instead of showing up halfway through.

How we price your doors

We walk the house with you, count the doors, check each frame, and talk through styles and hardware. Then you get a written, itemized price that shows each part of the job, along with a start date and how long it will take. That price doesn’t change when the old doors come down.

If you’re ready to swap out tired doors, take a look at our interior door installation page to see how we hang them, or call us at 631-745-9982.