Flush Wood Doors

Topic Summary

Hollow-core doors are lightweight, having a honeycomb inner construction, and are normally used for interiors in residential and light commercial construction. Hollow-core doors may be flat or embossed to resemble panel doors. Solid-core doors may have particleboard, glued wood stave, engineered wood, or mineral (fire-rated) cores and are more rigid, therefore less prone to warping.

Door faces of hardboard or fiberboard can be used for interior doors which are to be painted. Multi-ply faces with wood veneers may be used for opaque or transparent finished doors. A wide variety of wood species and cuts are available for transparent finished doors.

Door construction is often described by the number of plies, such as 3-, 5-, or 7-ply. A 3-ply door has a monolithic face bonded to each side of the core. A 5-ply door has each face composed of 2-plies: the inner layer, called the cross-band, and the outer face ply. A two-ply cross-band with each face ply makes a 7-ply door. 7-ply doors may have very thin veneer faces that can help reduce the cost when an exotic veneer is chosen. 7-ply doors are usually produced with un-bonded or floating cores. 5-ply doors usually have bonded cores, with the core glued to the stile and rail edges and then sanded before the faces are applied. Bonded doors are more expensive to produce, but are somewhat more rigid than doors with un-bonded cores.

Factory finishing, especially for transparent finished doors, provides a more consistent product which requires less field labor.

Doors can also be furnished factory-prepared for hardware and provided with additional blocking for door closers and panic devices, to avoid through-bolts. Hollow-core doors can be furnished pre-hung in wood frames.

Some manufacturers can provide doors produced with FSC-certified wood to verify that the materials are sourced from managed forests to meet "green" building requirements.

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