Made to Measure Oak Doors

Custom size oak doors, built to your opening

Made to measure oak doors start as a set of measurements rather than a stock size. You send the width, the height and the design you want, and the door is cut and assembled to those figures, which is a different thing from buying a standard door and planing it down to fit. It matters wherever an opening does not match a size held in stock: houses built before standard door sizes settled, extensions and conversions where the structure came first, and anywhere a door needs to be taller, wider or narrower than the stock range runs.

Prime grade solid oak, cut to your measurements

The oak is prime grade A, kiln dried before it is worked so the door holds its shape once it is hanging in a heated house. Frames are mortice and tenon jointed, with panels, boards or a glazed opening set into them depending on the design, and the sections are deep enough to take a full mortice lock and a pair of butt hinges without crowding the stile. Where a knotty, reclaimed look is wanted, the same designs can be built in character grade oak with the knots and shakes left on show. These are solid oak doors rather than an oak face over a core, so grain and colour vary from one door to the next and no two are quite alike.

Where a door built to size earns its place

Older houses are the obvious case, because doorways in anything Victorian or earlier were built long before standard sizes existed and rarely land on one. Newer work creates the same problem from the other direction, since extensions and conversions often finish with openings taller or wider than the stock range runs to, and a cupboard or store doorway is frequently narrower than the smallest stock width. Trimming a stock door only goes so far before the lipping and the panel proportions suffer, so building to the figures is the cleaner answer. If you are working from a drawing rather than a catalogue, it is usually the only way to hold the detail you have designed.

The designs you can have built

The range covers the same design families as our stock sizes, so a door built to measure can be matched to doors already hanging elsewhere in the house. Four and six panel layouts and the one over three 1930s pattern suit period rooms, and those sit together in traditional bespoke oak doors. Flat panel shaker faces and vertically grooved fronts suit newer interiors, and those are grouped as contemporary bespoke oak doors. Boarded frame and ledge doors and ledged and braced barn designs give a cottage or outbuilding look, and most solid designs also have a half glazed version.

• Width and height built to your measurements rather than trimmed down from a stock size
• Prime grade A solid oak throughout, with character grade available where a knotty look is wanted
• Mortice and tenon framed, with panels, boards or a glazed opening depending on the design
• Period four and six panel, one over three 1930s, flat panel shaker, vertically grooved, boarded cottage and ledged barn designs
• Half glazed versions of most of the solid designs
• Thickness specified on the order rather than fixed to a stock size
• Made to order, with the lead time varying by design and size

Designs with a glazed opening

Several designs carry a glazed opening in place of a solid panel, which is how you move daylight between rooms without giving up the door. Those are grouped in made to measure glazed oak doors, where the layouts are set out in full. Because the opening is built to the same measurements as the rest of the door, a half glazed version can sit in a run alongside solid doors of the same design without the panel lines shifting.

Matching doors already in the house

A made to measure door is often the only way to carry one design through a house where the doorways are not consistent, which is common in anything Victorian or earlier. Because the bespoke designs mirror the stock range, a door built to an unusual size can be matched to standard-size doors hanging elsewhere on the same landing. If a standard size does fit after all, the same design families sit in our solid oak doors range and will be with you a great deal sooner. Our made to measure doors page covers how the service works, and there is more on the range as a whole on our bespoke doors page. Hanging any of these needs a pair of hinges and a latch or lock to suit the thickness, which sit with door handles and hinges.