subject: Hinged Doors, Types And Function [print this page] A door is the part of a house that closes off a major entrance. Contrary to how most people understand it, its real function is not to create an opening but to close off an opening or serve as a temporary or movable wall. This is to protect the entire structure from immediate change of temperature and from dust.
The most common type of door is hinged door. The hinges allow the door to swing either outward or inward to create an entrance when necessary and swing back to a point of mechanism that locks it up. This type of door is normally used in small residential houses and internal offices of buildings where the order of entry is one man at a time.
There are also doors that have two panels, each being hinged on the opposite side of the other. They are used for heavy traffic entrance such as in commercial buildings, department stores, and the like. These hinged doors usually have a locking mechanism that stops them at a 45-degree angle. Some hinged doors can create a full 180-degree swing both inward and outward to further facilitate entrance, like those used in emergency rooms and restaurant working areas.
Vertical hinging is the most common as it is the easiest design for doors. But some doors are hinged horizontally to serve a different function. For example, the type of door used in the garage is one that pivots on a horizontal hinge. This allows a wider space for vehicles and provides an opening allowance. Horizontal hinging is also used in custom iron doors for car compartments.
Hinged doors can be made of different materials depending on their use. Most residential doors are made of wood panels. Wood is a durable material and esthetically flexible by nature. But there are also those made of a combination of glass and wood, glass and metal or purely custom iron doors. This variation in design corresponds to the variety of architectural totality of a structure.
Custom iron doors are hinged doors that usually consist of some grills of creative coils and arrangement. It can be a primary opening before the main wooden panel to serve as a protector or it can be the main door itself. This type is commonly used in gates of large compounds and as doors of a garage. Special iron doors are used in banks for big vaults.
