Replacing internal doors is one of those jobs that looks simple until you price it up and find quotes ranging from under a hundred pounds a door to well over five hundred. The difference is rarely down to the joiner being greedy. It comes down to the door itself, the hardware, the state of your existing frames and whether the house was built square in the first place. Here is what the money actually goes on, based on the kind of work we do in and around Bedford.
The door is usually the biggest single variable. A basic moulded hollow core door from a builders merchant can be had for £30 to £60. A solid core or engineered oak veneer door typically runs £90 to £200. A properly solid hardwood door, or a bespoke made to measure one, can easily be £250 to £500 or more before anyone has touched it.
Fire doors are a separate category. If you have a room over an integral garage, a loft conversion or a three storey house, Building Regulations may require FD30 fire doors on certain openings. These start at around £80 for a plain primed one and go up from there, and they also need intumescent strips, appropriate hinges and often a self closer, which all add cost.
People often forget the ironmongery when budgeting. Each door needs at least three hinges (two on very light doors, but three is proper practice), a latch or lock, handles and a keep plate. Budget handle sets start at about £10 a pair. Decent lever on rose or lever on backplate sets in brushed steel, black or brass are more like £25 to £60, and designer ranges run past £100 a door.
Bathrooms and bedrooms may want a privacy turn or a bathroom lock rather than a plain latch. Hinges need to be sized to the door weight: a heavy oak door on lightweight 75mm hinges will drop within a year. Reckon on £20 to £80 of hardware per door for a sensible mid range fit out.
For a straightforward swap where the existing frame and lining are sound, most joiners in Bedfordshire charge in the region of £60 to £120 per door for labour. That covers trimming the door to size, cutting in the hinges and latch, fitting the handles and hanging it to close cleanly. If you are having several doors done in one visit, the per door rate usually comes down because setup and travel are shared.
Where it gets more expensive is when the frame or lining needs replacing too. Fitting a new lining, architrave and stop, then making good the plaster, roughly doubles the labour and adds materials, so £180 to £300 per opening is a more realistic figure. Older Bedford housing stock, particularly Victorian terraces around Castle Road or Queens Park, often has openings that are neither square nor a standard size, which means more time scribing and fitting.
Putting that together, a sensible budget for a mid range door, decent handles and professional fitting into an existing frame is £180 to £350 per door in this area. Going for a solid oak door with quality hardware pushes it to £400 to £650. A full replacement including new lining and architrave on an awkward old opening can reach £500 to £800 even with a modest door.
Two things worth flagging. First, standard imperial door sizes such as 1981mm by 762mm are cheap and plentiful, but if your openings are metric or an odd width, you will pay more for the door and for the fitting. Second, pre finished doors cost more upfront but save on decorating, which is often the hidden expense people overlook when comparing quotes.
Do all the doors at once if you can. The saving on labour is real and you get a consistent look throughout. Measure your openings before you shop so you are not paying to have oversized doors planed down heavily, which weakens the door and looks wrong. If the frames are sound, keep them and just replace the doors and stops.
Where not to economise: hinges, fire doors and anything a child or elderly relative uses daily. A cheap hinge or latch is the part you will be paying someone to come back and fix. If a quote seems suspiciously low, ask whether it includes hardware, whether the door will be trimmed to fit properly rather than forced, and whether the joiner will take the old doors away.
Usually yes, provided the lining is solid, square and not rotten or split around the hinge positions. A joiner will check this before quoting, and it is the single biggest way to keep the cost down.
Only in specific situations set out in Building Regulations, such as doors opening onto a stairwell in a three storey house, doors between a house and an integral garage, or as part of a loft conversion. For a standard two storey house, ordinary internal doors are fine.
A competent joiner will hang a door into an existing frame in around one to two hours. A full opening with new lining and architrave is more like half a day, plus any decorating afterwards.