What's the secret to a good interior door?

[untrepid]

The doors in my house always feel kinda crappy. they don't close nicely, feel thin, feel cheap etc... As I'm about to fit new ones in my own stud walls and the likes, it occurs to me there's a number of factors going on, and I don't know what really matters.

I have reasonable solid pine doors already, and was thinking of ditching them for something new, but I'm currently thinking as far as the end feel of using them goes, the handle, barrel, striking plate and all that is possibly far more important that the door itself?

Wickes do cheap primed doors, just £20... Can these, when well fitted, feel like a decent (or decent enough) "new build" door? What kind of doors do these bland, sterile new builds tend to have? Right now, bland and sterile sounds great to me!

 

[SFK]

Untrepid,
For me it always the weight of the door (or rather momentum and impulse) and then the smoothness of the bearings in the handle and hinges that shows the quality.

The £20 door you are looking at weighs 12kg, their 2for£150 oak veneer door weighs 27kg and (I believe) feels higher quality when you feel its weight when you try opening and closing it.

You can test this with 'plain' Fire Doors, does their weight make them feel better quality than a plain standard door? - I feel it does. :>

But of course the difference between £20 and £75 per door when you may need 10 doors is sizable :<

As you already have "solid pine doors" I would be tempted to stay with these over £20 Cheap Primed Doors.

SFK

 

[SFK]

Also, (unfortunately further increasing your costs) for the heaver doors I always use "ball bearing" hinges such as these. You could try these on one of your solid pine doors and see if it makes a diffrence in their quality feel:
http://www.screwfix.com/c/security-...840988#category=cat840988&productlength=76_mm

 

[SFK]

And one last item in case you do decided to change doors. Many doors say that they can be trimmed by (say) 10 mm...... but note that that usually means that the amount that can be trimmed is (say) 5mm on each side giving a TOTAL of 10 mm off each length and a TOTAL of 10 mm off the height. I have made this mistake before and ended up hitting the eggbox / chipboard inner. (fortunately both on the bottom of the door, which I fixed with a block of wood for the eggbox and wood filler to flatten the chipboard).

 

[untrepid]

Thanks for your comments, I didn't even know bearing hinges were a thing. Will be picking up those for sure. I suppose I might as well see if the existing doors are good enough, they are solid wood at least, with a decent gloss coat maybe they'll pass.