28″ or 32″ door widths?
jackofalltrades777
| Posted in Interior Design on
The door widths to the bedrooms in my home design are 32″. Should I have the architect design the bathroom door widths at 32″ also or leave them at the standard 28″ width?
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I am no architect , and you might inquire about pricing difference,
but design with 32" and 34" doors solely in my house
( which are all DIY doors ) and i would never go back to standard 28-30 doors .
Especially doors between busy rooms or where you will need to move in/out furniture,bed and appliances ( so yes..all house rooms )
In fact every door you will go through should be at minimum 32" :p
Peter,
You are discussing 28-inch-wide and 32-inch-wide doors. Jin mentioned 34-inch-wide doors.
But an argument can be made in favor of making as many doors as possible (perhaps all doors) 36 inches wide. This makes your house more accessible for people in wheelchairs. Even if you don't have anyone in your family who now uses a wheelchair, that may change in the future. Any you never know when you may have visitors to your home who use a wheelchair; some of these visitors might want to use the bathroom.
Ultimately, however, it's your house -- so you get to build it any way you want, as long as it meets code requirements.
Peter, I'm in agreement with your architect. In the absence of accessibility issues which in the absence of an elevator make little sense on upper floors we regularly use 28" doors on upper floor bathrooms, sometimes even 24" when space is tight on a retrofit. Wider doors can be self-defeating (take up more space in the room, can make access harder instead of easier). And how often do you plan to move bulky furniture in and out of your bathroom?
On first floor bathrooms we generally try to use 32" doors but this only really makes sense if the bathroom is in other ways usable by a person in a wheelchair. Walkers are a much more common disability aid and I've never seen one which won't fit comfortably through a 28".
We design every single house with Universal Design principles, whether its small or large house. Every door in the first floor is 36" min., and on the second floor 32" min., unless we install elevators, chair lifts or requested by the owner. The most common challenge in on small bathrooms, but they need to be designed with standard 66" width.
Its always a good idea to design two-story homes with an accessible bedroom and bathroom on the first floor. Several years a go, we determined that the increase cost of designing a typical 2,000 sf house to UD standards was $250; but the Designer needs to plan that from the beginning.
Unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise, every door should be 36" wide. Someday, someone will be living in the house in a wheelchair. In the meantime, trying to fit furniture through a skinny door will drive you nuts. It happens to me all the time. My new house will have all 36" doors, except a guest bath.
While we're on doors, levers, not knobs.
About one half of one percent of people in this country use a wheel chair. While I am a firm supporter of ADA for commercial buildings, building every private house for this is madness
If your house is huge, it makes no difference, but with 36 inch doors, every hallway needs to be wider, every bathroom is bigger, bedrooms and every single space start growing. In a world of not so big houses, 3 foot doors are bad design.
Two examples in my own house. Squeezing a half bath in meant carefully sizing the door because every inch of door width is an an inch of bathroom depth, to clear the toilet . My master bedroom looks huge, however, with a 30 inch door, a king size bed, and the two matching side tables just fit while allowing the door to open fully. A 3 foot door would require an over 14 foot room to accommodate our existing furniture, and the room weren't gettin no bigger.
no, I consider 30 inch a standard for interior doors. With an open floor plan, a disabled or elderly person would have nominal cost to increase probably 2 doorways to 36 inch width, rather than the whole world being half a foot wider.
This is very different from workplaces and public spaces, where, for instance a person could not work because of lack of accommodation.
My personal house 36" EVERYWHERE!! I've learned from my grandmother, uncle and my own mother that you never know what the future holds! Try to walk down a 36" wide hallway beside someone using a walker, doesn't work well, 48" wide works much better
It’s a common misunderstanding that Universal Design is the same as ADA; it is not. Universal design features increase the usability of the home by people of all ages, sizes, and abilities and enhance the ability of all residents to live independently in their own homes for as long as possible. When complemented with green building techniques, it provides a better home and environment for the occupants.
One could never know when a family member gets injured; it happened to me 27 years ago before my 40s. How about when one of our parents have to live with us, or just come for a visit, and they have mobility issues. Trying to sell a UD home increases your chances for the next buyers; someone has said we are getting older in the US. In my opinion, designing and building a house without UD is shortchanging, and perhaps, shows a lack of vision. Not any different than 20 years ago when we were trying to sell green building.
For the record, there are several municipalities that require minimum accessibility requirements in all new homes. It appears also there are some folks who want to include UD in the next code change.
Universal Design is a great aspiration. It's ultimately unachievable of course as people come in such different shapes and sizes and so do their disabilities - a countertop height that's a perfect height for a wheelchair user is torture for a six-footer with a bad back - but it's a useful overlay for critiquing and improving our designs. We do well to make sensible provisions for accessibility like stepless entries and accessible first floor bathroom space. That said, an oversize door on a second floor bathroom, in the absence of some specific identifiable need, is impossible to justify on any practical basis.
Response to Keith
The original question was in connection with a new house design. The solution to your concerns about the space a door swing requires is pocket doors. I have them in my existing house and will have a bunch in my new house. Don't you ever move a sofa or table from one room to another? Thirty inches just doesn't cut it. Size matters:-)
If it's your house you need to decide on what's comfortable to you and your spouse. If your married to a big girl you want 36" and the same in reverse, meaning you. If your both vegetarians we can assume you can survive with less. No pun intended.
As Stephen said: Pocket doors, or two small french doors, barn door hardware. Lots of ways to skin a cat.