What Exterior Door Is The Best For Your Home?

The exterior door is often the first item up for inspection by prospective home buyers. Old scratched front entry door will dowgrade the first impression of the house. While new, nice-looking entry door will add positive scores to your house value.

What exterior door is best for your home?

There is a great variety of the exterior doors now. The prices for entry doors range from $50-250 for basic options up to $2,000 for more durable decorative models. Installation costs start at $280 for standard pre-hung door.

It’s easy to choose the proper front door when you know main characteristics of the products.

Materials

Front doors can be: steel, iron, wooden, and fiberglass.

Insulated steel doors are weather resistant, strong, energy efficient, easy to maintain and affordable. Steel doors have higher insulation ratio than wooden doors, almost 5 times. They are less expensive than wooden or fiberglass doors. Minor disadvantages are limited design options, dent and rust sensitivity. As a variation to steel, iron doors provide more durability than any other type of the entry doors. Welded iron doors may vary in design from fancy to rustic.

Wooden doors are secure and dent resistant. Main advantage: they are beautiful and customizable. The quality and design depend on the wood species selected for the door. Big issue with wooden doors is that they weather-sensitive, it’s highly recommended to install storm door to protect natural wood from excess moisture, direct sunlight and temperature fluctuations. Weather-stripping may also help with proper insulation and durability of the entry door. Be prepared to occasional maintenance of the wooden door look, like refinishing or painting.

Iron, steel, or wooden exterior doors may include fiberglass elements of glossy or matte finish. They are durable and weather resistant, affordable and require low maintenance. Slight transparency and sleek design contribute to elegant look of yur house.

Insulated fiberglass doors are produced of composite materials. They are more strong, energy efficient than wooden doors but not the cheapest alternative. Fiberglass doors can be slightly faded with the course of time.  Usually fiberglass doors cost almost the same as high-end wooden doors.

Front entry door styles

Front entry door may be classic, midcentury, modern, mediterranean, craftsman styles.

Fron entry door may be simple or contain transom and sidelights. Transom is a window directly above the entry door. Sidelights are the narrow vertical windows on one or both sides of an exterior door.

Technical specifications

Exterior doors may be sold as prehung and slab packages. Prehung doors include both the door and the frame that supports the door, while slab doors include only the door. Contractors and DIY exterts recomend to purchase prehung doors to save time on installation and avoid costly mistakes during the installation process.

The doors may be outswing and inswing. Outswing is the door that swings open outward, while the inswing door – inward.

Measuring

Basically, you need 3 measurements to determine if you need standard and cusom-made exterior door.

Height – measure the opening of the doorway vertically from the floor to the top of the door jamb. Standard height of an entry door is 80 inches.

Width – measure the width of the doorway horizontally 3 times – once near the top, once in the middle and once near the bottom. If the measurements vary, use the shortest distance. Standards widths of 30 inches, 32 inches and 36 inches are mostly available in home improvement and hardware stores.

Jamb – measure the width of the door jamb. This is the edge-to-edge distance of one of the sides of the door frame. Standard thickness of entry door is 1 ¾ inches.

If your measurements differ from standard values, you have to order custom-made exterior door or build a frame of your entry to meet the standard values.