Internal doors – what’s the difference between construction types?

We’re replacing 7 internal doors and fancy going for a natural oak finish.

What’s the difference between the different construction types though?
Is solid oak ‘that’ much better than a veneer?
And if veneer what’s the best core material?

If you have to cut any down to size, the veneer are a PITA as you have to take off the edge then cut down the body and glue the edge back on as the inner is often full of holes.

If you’re buying the exact size you need then the veneered ones are much cheaper and probably better for the environment as in using less hardwood.

If you’re after fire doors I’d be very skeptical about their ratings, Grenfield showed that industry practice was/is just to make up fire safety ratings when the product is known to fail.

I’ve got Solid doors downstairs and supposedly matching veneer doors upstairs.

The main difference is the price, we didn’t set out to buy cheaper doors upstairs, we’re just lucky enough to have a house build during the 70s house building boom, and it seems the upstairs guys were younger and used metric and the downstairs guys used a completely arbitrary systems of non-standards based on the phases of the moon, which resulted in surprisingly tall, but narrow doors.

Anyway, the veneer doors are mostly okay, from a distance, in isolation, but compared they crap. They also took way, way longer to fit. The first guy gave up, handed our money back and walked out, the second lot wished they done the same, but were too decent not to. This made be specific to the doors we bought. On the upside they have a good weight to them.

The solid doors weren’t without issue “they’re full finished sir” which you might think means they’re ‘finished’ but somehow doesn’t, I was told I’d have to oil them after the fact, which isn’t hard, but it wasn’t mentioned they also needed a “final sand” so I’ve so slightly rough doors I’ll have to do again when I can bring myself to re-do work on “fully finished” doors that cost an absolute fortune.

They do look nice though.

They also took way, way longer to fit. The first guy gave up, handed our money back and walked out, the second lot wished they done the same, but were too decent not to. This made be specific to the doors we bought. On the upside they have a good weight to them.

Next door neighbour had a new front door fitted, one of the veneered ones. Took the chippie a whole day to fit a single door. Being a 120 year old Victorian house the door had to be cut down to size. This involved first cutting off a 3″ section with the edge veneer / solid wood bit and putting to one side. Then cutting the mid section down to size, then glueing the 3″ edge section back to the reduced mid section. Then sanding down etc to remove the signs of the join. Repeat same for the top. He had to repeat the edge thing on both sides to keep the panels symmetric.

Then you still have to paint and fit all the furniture!

Plus you end up with a weaker door after all that….

Also the screws that you attach the door handle plate / anything to the door work loose as its just chipboard in the middel. You can get long bolts that go all the way through to connect the 2 faces together. If you mess up the screws for the hinges it can be interesting.

If I was doing it again I’d have gone with solid clear pine instead of the veneer oak effect. Choose a nice matt varnish or oil and they’ll look just as good. If I could afford genuine oak solid wood then I’d go for that, but its only an internal door.

There’s solid oak and there’s solid, oak door.

The former are made 100% from oak, the latter is solid wood, but with solid oak on sections on the sides, top and bottom.

The sizes of these sections vary between companies.

I was advised against solid oak doors as they’re more likely to warp, so went with solid wood doors with 25mm oak sections on all edges.

These weigh 44kg each.

I bought 9 in various sizes and fitted them myself, which is a pain by yourself. 5 years later, they all still fit perfectly, no warping, no swelling, no failed or squeaky hinges.

I bought them raw and oiled them myself with a couple of coats.

I put in 5 veneer, glazed doors, 3 years ago, found it fairly easy to be honest, bought the right size doors but still had to plane them a bit, again no issues. I used Jeld Wen doors.

Just replaced a number of doors with Oak veneer, but sought out ones with 18mm lippngs all round (most are circa 9mm) with solid chipboard and ply core. Seemingly easy to hang, chippy had five done in the day, with hardware.

You can tell they’re veneer but with a couple of coats of Osmo Poly X, they look really rather good.

We were also advised against sold wood doors, as opossed to solid contruction, good chance of warping / splitting.

Against the advice of one of the chippies on here I fitted 6 bare faced oak veneer doors from.bnq as they did the full gammut of sizes I needed to avoid having to cut into the core.

Were easy to fit. I selected the non damaged ones off the shelf in the shop my self reassuringly heavy

They have been in 10 years. No warping or otherwise.

When I built the extension I bought another and it was also easy to fit.

Coat of osmo oil and they look fine and operate as doors should.

They replaced hollow moulded doors…. You couldn’t even slam them the air would stop them. They were awful.