How wide does a doorway need to be for a walker or wheelchair?
Most interior doors in American houses are 28 or 30 inches wide. Every interior door in my own two-flat is 28. That number is fine until the day a walker, a wheelchair, or a person on someone's arm has to get through it, and then it becomes the wall you plan your whole day around.
Here are the numbers, where they come from, and why this is the single cheapest thing to change in a renovation and one of the most expensive to change after.
The numbers
The measurement that matters is clear width: the open space you can actually pass through with the door open, not the size printed on the door. A door loses width to its own thickness and the stop on the frame, so a 30-inch door gives you about 28 inches of clear space, and a 32-inch door gives you about 30.
The published standard for a doorway a wheelchair can use is 32 inches of clear width (STD). That is the minimum, with the door open all the way. To get 32 clear, you order a 34-inch door. To have some room to spare, which is what I ask for, you order a 36-inch door, which gives you about 34 clear (PRACTICE).
For reference, most walkers are 24 to 28 inches wide, and most manual wheelchairs are 24 to 27 inches at the wheels. The gap between that and 32 is your hands, your elbows, and the fact that nobody goes through a door in a perfectly straight line.
Why it costs nothing now
While the house is a drawing, a wider door is a number the architect changes. There is no cost. When the doors are ordered, a 36-inch door costs a little more than a 30-inch one, usually the price of a nicer handle. While the walls are open, framing the opening wider is the same work as framing it narrow.
That's the whole window. Three moments, all before the drywall goes up.
Why it costs a lot later
After the wall is closed, widening a doorway means cutting out the drywall on both sides, reframing the opening with a new header over it, patching the wall, patching the floor where the old frame sat, new trim, new paint, and a new door. In an older house you may find wiring or a pipe running through the wall next to the door, and then the job grows. It's a construction job, with a permit in some cities, for something that was free six months earlier.
The door didn't change. The week did.
Which doors
If you can't do every door, do these, in this order:
The bathroom you'd use on a bad day.
The bedroom you'd sleep in on a bad day.
The door you come into the house through.
The hallway that connects them.
Hallways have their own number. The published minimum for a hallway a wheelchair can use is 36 inches wide (STD). I ask for 42 where the plan allows it, because 36 is enough to go straight and not enough to turn into a doorway off the hall without a three-point maneuver (PRACTICE).
What to say
To an architect, before the drawings are final:
"Please make the bathroom, bedroom and entry doors 36 inches, and the hallways to them at least 36 clear."
To a contractor, before the doors are ordered:
"I want 36-inch doors on the bathroom, bedroom and entry. Please confirm the rough openings are framed for that before drywall."
If a door has to stay narrow because a wall can't move, ask about a swing-clear hinge. It swings the door out of the opening and gives you about two more inches of clear width. It's a cheap fix on an existing door (VERIFY, the gain depends on the door and the hinge).
If the walls are already closed
Then this one is expensive, and you should spend the money on the bathroom door first and leave the rest. Or ask which wall next to a door is not load-bearing and not full of pipes, because that's the one door that's still cheap to widen. Which wall that is belongs to your contractor or an engineer, not to me.
The bigger list
Door width is one of the decisions a renovation makes while the house is still a drawing, before anyone has bought anything. It's in the free guide, The Decisions Your Renovation Makes Without You, along with the rest of what closes at each stage. It's short and set in large print. Sign up and the download is yours.
