Hello.
Just rewatching Criminal Minds and it brought up this question in my mind that I’ve wanted to ask long ago:
Why are house & apatment outer doors opening inwards in US? Here in Finland even with ever winter snow our doors open always outward. When I try to recall outer doors all over Europe I recall them opening always outward.
Why are US doors opening Inwards?
For one thing, security. Outward-swinging doors are hinged on the outside. While there are secure outdoor hinges (almost all commercial buildings in the US have outward-swinging doors), it’s much cheaper and simpler to just have inward-swinging doors with simple removable pin hinges on the inside.
Another reason is that, in all the houses I’ve lived in in the US, there’s a main inner door and an outer screen/storm door. Given that, the inner door has to open inward and the outer door outward.
I’m trying to think of what the possible benefit to an outward-opening door on a private home would be.
In a commercial building the main reason is that you need to be able to have a large group of people exit quickly in the event of a fire or similar emergency. In a private residence, if anything, the opposite is the case - there’s never going to be so many people that the crowd of people at the door prevents it from opening inwards, but there very well could be something blocking it from the outside.
The snow thing is a real concern, as is the security of the hinges. What about the day to day practicalities? If someone knocks on the door and the person opening it is inside, wouldn’t they fling the door into the visitor’s face every time?
Is there some understood reason why doors in Finland work this way?
Once upon a time, people would block doors by wedging a chair under the doorknob. (I have an idea that the ‘notches’ on the backs of some wooden chairs are more than decorative.)
So benefits to exterior outward opening doors. A gain of indoor space and perhaps a better resistance to door kicker inners.
But I’ve only experienced the convenience of entering an inward opening door with your hands full of things, a reach with your key unlock then push, it opens. Shut /slam /slap door behind with foot, groceries delivered.
So when you get a heavy snowfall, how do you get outside to shovel away the snow so that you can open the door?
It’s not that hard if you have a covered porch. Most of the denver square styles of home here have a 6’ porch on the front of the house. It would have to be a really weird storm for them to be unable to open their door opening outward.
Oddly enough, my front and side doors open inwards while my back door opens outwards. If it’s windy and and I am bringing stuff to/from the backyard the door swings around and can slam shut. My other doors don’t have this issue.
When I open my door to a visitor, I’m inside and have control of the door. Who opens the door when you have visitors? Do people visit in Finland? Do you leave the door unlocked and expect people to enter the entry-way before knocking?
Tangent: the tradition in homes in Australia was that entry doors swung in and against the wall to provide access, bedroom doors swung into the room, to retain privacy. Hardly anybody does it that way anymore – bedrooms are too small to waste the space.
This blog entry (from an Australian door company) suggests two reasons for outward-opening exterior doors:
It also says that outward-opening doors are becoming common in Florida, as they can help prevent damage during hurricances (from not being easily blown in by high wind), but I haven’t been to enough new homes in Florida to know if this is the case.
I have no idea how much of the above is fact, versus speculation, but it provides some interesting perspective.
Here in at least coastal FL exterior doors for new construction or retrofit in housing have to be so called “hurricane rated”. Which means they’re designed not to fall apart under some pretty insane windloads.
It is cheaper and easier to build an outward-opening door that can’t be blown in than an inward-opening door that can’t be blown in. The former can be supported all around the perimeter by the doorjamb while the latter is restrained only by the latch and deadbolt (if any).
When I retrofit my condo with hurricane rated doors ~5 years ago your contractor grade undecorated hurricane rated outward opening door was a few hundred dollars and the inward opening ones were about double that and needed special doorlock/deadbolt arrangements with more throw and wider bolts. Of course more decorative or even stouter ones can get much more expensive. In either case the casement connects into the building structure a lot more securely than is typical in non-hurricane construction.
I’m told the difference in price between out- and in- is declining as demand for inward hurricane rated is growing. But it’s still considerable.
The US is hardly alone. I have never seen an outward-opening door on a home in Thailand. Maybe not anywhere else I’ve been in Asia.
I’m also in South Florida. My front door and both back doors open outward.
I’ve had it happen, where an outwards opening screen door is blocked by snow in a blizzard. I’ve had to go out a different door with a shovel to unblock the door.
Do you have a covered porch over that door? How big is it? The other feature I didn’t mention but makes a difference is most of these porches have a 3’ wall along the front of it.
For apartments and hotels rooms, etc. - obviously, you could open the door into the face of someone walking down the corridor, a real safety hazard. An open door in some older buildings would leave no room in the corridor to get by. Similarly, all the interior doors that I can recall in Canada (and what comes to mind in the USA) open inward into the room. Even on a dead-end /corner corridor, if the interior door is hung the wrong way, it totally could block the corridor… many door assemblies for construction come pre-hung in the frame. So inward is standard. But… closets in the corridor open outward, because they have to.
Mainly, for exterior doors topologist ahs it right. Most exterior doors swing in so a storm door can be added on the outside- a sliding glass window in the door opens to screen. (Old fashioned wood ones, the glass window was removed for the summer.) In the days before air conditioning was common, this was one way to get a breeze through the house open doors front and back, but with screens to keep out the flies. (Or in Canada, mosquitos).
Oddly, my patio doors open outward - but it’s a fake pair, one is just a crank-out door with a screen on the inside, the other just a door, no storm door.
Note if a door opens inward, without a screen door driving rain will run down the door and into the house, since the slightly raised sill (if there is one) is on the exterior; whereas with outward opening doors, the sill is on the inside and water does not run into the house. My front door(s) opens inward, no screen, but with a wide 8 foot porch overhang, Rarely does the door get wet.
Bootb asked:
“So when you get a heavy snowfall, how do you get outside to shovel away the snow so that you can open the door?”
It depends. Maybe you have covered porch or you’ve contracted outside maintenance to clear the snow (most apartment buildings do this) or you have two ways out and wind usually don’t pack snow on both sides of a house. Ways are many.
Here’s a little anecdote from my career in Finland Post:
The company had had a new headquarters building erected and it’s fire alarm system had some hiccups in the begging. So the emergency exit route from my cubicle was out of the side of the building and every time the fire alarm went off I and few other guys followed the path to the side exit and opened that door. The door had a fuse on it’s handle so everytime we opened it the maintenace people neede to refit a new fuse on the door. The maintenace manager always called our boss and asked if we could use the main entrance to go out as the fire alarms were false and there was no hurry out and our boss always told him that he cannot ask that as the following the exit routing should be used always so that one does not go the wrong way in case of real alarm. This all happened during summer and in the end of that summer the problems with the fire alarms were fixed.
Comes next winter and one day the fire alarm goes off. I and few other head to the side exit and it was blocked by snow. So couple of use pushed the door forcefully open which resulted that the aluminium doorframe buckled and few windows shattered. In the end our department heard nothing from the maintenance as it was their job to keep the fire exits clear of snow.
Not in my experience in the UK, and from home exchanges to Paris, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Barcelona…
Except, that is, in more modern developments of lots of flats, where the external door to the whole building opens outwards for rapid evacuation in case of fire. But in older buildings even the external door for the whole building opens inwards.
Nor mine