Two dimensions that get confused
Almost every sizing mistake in this trade comes from the same source: there are two measurements and people treat them as one. The clear frame opening is the gap you walk through with the door fully open. The overall architrave size is the footprint on the wall once the door is installed. Between them sits 15–20 cm of architrave.
The clear opening tells you whether your furniture passes; the overall size tells you whether your structural opening is big enough.
Apartment doors
The common reference for residential entrances is a 90 × 200 cm clear opening. With roughly 10 cm of architrave, the overall size reaches about 108 × 210 cm. These figures evolved to suit the rough openings left in standard apartment construction.
Deviations are usually small. Older buildings vary between about 86 and 94 cm, absorbed by architrave width and packing. In height, the floor finish decides: ceramic plus adhesive takes 2–3 cm, timber plus underlay 1.5–2 cm.
Building entrance and villa doors
Entrance doors grow, because both the load and the nature of the passage change. The usual reference is 145 × 215 cm clear, about 165 × 223 cm overall. That width cannot sit on one leaf, so it is split, normally asymmetrically: a main leaf for daily use and a narrower second leaf opened when furniture has to pass.
The second variable here is frame depth. External walls are thick and often carry insulation, so frames adjustable between 20 and 24 cm are used, letting one door suit several wall build-ups. At building entrance doors scale, leaf weight rises well above apartment level and hinge count rises with it.
Villa doors use the same size family but add glazing. Glass brings both weight and a tolerance constraint: panes are cut to the leaf, so sizes cannot be adjusted afterwards. When choosing from glazed villa steel doors, confirm the dimensions before confirming the model.
Fire doors
Fire doors commonly work from a 90 × 200 cm clear opening with an overall size near 104 × 208 cm. The narrower architrave reflects where these doors live — stair enclosures and plant room entrances, where decorative expectations are low.
Wider passages use double leaves, with the active leaf chosen to suit the escape direction. Sizing here follows clear passage width during escape, so the intrusion of lever and panic bar is counted.
How deviations are absorbed
- 0–2 cm: taken up by packing and architrave bearing. A standard door fits.
- 2–5 cm: resolved by changing architrave width or adding an extension profile; the standard leaf is retained.
- 5 cm and over: the frame is recut and the leaf size changes. This is made-to-measure.
- Out-of-square walls: beyond about 3 cm of deviation, correcting the wall beats hiding it behind architrave, or the frame never bears properly and works loose.
What changes on a bespoke order
Non-standard sizes affect more than the frame. The pattern is rescaled, and some motifs are simplified because proportion suffers — a medallion drawn for a 90 cm leaf looks cramped at 75 cm. Lock and handle axes are repositioned for the new leaf height, since axis height is an ergonomic figure. Glazing is recalculated. Lead times are therefore longer and pricing is separate: made-to-measure is a different production flow, not an add-on.
Sending your sizes
- Width at bottom, middle and top — the smallest governs, but send all three.
- Height at both jambs and centre, stating the floor reference.
- Wall thickness including plaster, which sets frame depth.
- Swing direction and handing.
- Thickness of any floor finish still to be laid.
Models built to standard sizes drop into existing openings and ship faster. Colour is not a sizing constraint: our anthracite steel doors and the other colour ranges are all produced in the same size family. For export, send measurements in centimetres along with quantities per size, and we will quote per door with shipping from Istanbul calculated separately.
