Interior doors for a UAE home: solid core, hollow core, flush or panelled

Core and face are two different choices

Every door is two decisions. The core is what fills the leaf between its two faces: nothing much, a dense board or solid wood. The face is what you see: flat, which the trade calls flush, or raised and fielded panels, which it calls panelled. A flush door can be hollow or solid. So can a panelled one. Ask about both.

The core sets the weight, the sound, the fire behaviour and the feel of the handle in your hand. The face sets the look and most of the price difference between a plain lacquered door and a veneered one with mouldings.

Hollow core

A hollow core leaf is two thin skins over a frame, with a cardboard honeycomb or spaced ribs inside and a solid block where the lock goes. It is light to hang and easy to carry up a stair. It also sounds like a drum when you knock on it, lets conversation through, and does not take a heavy handle or a second lock well. It suits a cupboard, a store room or a rental refresh on a budget.

Makers do not usually publish a sound figure for hollow core doors, and that tells you something. For a bedroom, a bathroom or a study, look at a solid core.

Solid core: what the numbers say

A solid core door is a dense board, most often a layered particleboard or a timber core, between two faces. One British maker of fire door blanks publishes the figures for its 44 mm blank: a density of about 630 kg per cubic metre, a weight of 27.7 kg per square metre, and a sound reduction of 33 dB for a single door without glass. Its 54 mm blank, rated for sixty minutes, weighs 34 kg per square metre and reaches 34 dB.

Put that on a standard leaf. An 826 by 2040 mm door cut from the 44 mm blank weighs about 47 kg before its edges and faces are added. The 54 mm blank gives about 57 kg. That is why a solid core door needs three hinges, a proper frame fixing and a lock case rather than a tubular latch, and why it closes with a soft thud instead of a clap.

Source: Halspan: Door blanks and cores range, technical brochure (hosted by Danube Building Materials)

How much noise does a solid door stop?

A Swedish maker's environmental declaration for a painted solid core interior door, 926 by 2040 by 60 mm, gives a weight of 61.6 kg and a sound reduction of 35 dB. The British blanks above sit at 33 to 34 dB. In a home, that is the difference between hearing the words of a conversation in the next room and hearing only that someone is talking.

The figure belongs to the leaf. A door with a 10 mm gap under it and no seals will not deliver it. If quiet is the point, ask for a drop seal or a threshold and perimeter seals, and expect to pay for them on their own line.

Source: One Click LCA: Interior wooden door leaf, solid core, painted (JELD-WEN environmental product declaration)

Flush or panelled?

Flush doors are flat. In lacquer they read as a plane of colour, in veneer as a sheet of grain, and they suit apartments with clean lines and recessed frames. Panelled doors carry mouldings and fielded panels, and they suit villas, classical rooms and anywhere the doors are meant to be seen as joinery rather than disappear into the wall.

The cost difference is mostly in the face and the finish, not the core. A panelled door in a solid timber frame with veneered panels is the most work. A flush solid core door in a sprayed lacquer is the least. Both can be hung on the same frame and the same hinges.

Which door for which room?

A room by room guide, from what the doors have to do.

Humidity: the UAE question

Door cores are made to a moisture content, the maker above quotes 6 to 12 percent on leaving the factory, and they move when the air around them is much wetter or drier. A bathroom door with a raw bottom edge drinks the shower steam, swells and starts to catch. Ask for every edge sealed and finished, including the two you never see. In a villa where the AC runs hard, the opposite happens: dry air shrinks a solid timber door across its width, which is why we prefer stable engineered cores over solid planks for wide leaves.

Source: Halspan: Door blanks and cores range, technical brochure (hosted by Danube Building Materials)

How we specify yours

For each door we write the core, the face, the finish, the hinges, the lock and the seals on their own lines, so you see what you pay for and what you can change. Frames and architraves are listed separately, because sometimes yours can stay. Read door and frame sizes next, or go to doors made to fit and tell us which rooms you need.