Interior Doors and Trim: Options and Costs

Replacing interior doors is one of the most noticeable changes a house can get for the money: every room has at least one, and a door is touched dozens of times a day. It is also more involved than it looks. Old houses settle out of square, old jambs carry decades of paint, and the trim around a door has to meet the floor, the wall and the casing on the next opening. This guide covers the door types, the two ways to install them, the trim and finish work, and typical Columbus installed ranges for 2025–2026.

Typical Columbus installed ranges

Ranges are per door, for a standard 24- to 36-inch opening, and include the door, labor, standard hinges and removal of the old door unless noted. Hardware, new casing and paint are listed separately because each one is a choice.

A whole-house job multiplies these quickly. A three-bedroom house commonly has 10 to 15 interior doors once closets are counted; ten hollow-core prehung doors with new casing and paint run roughly 10 × ($300–$600 + $150–$350 + $120–$300), or about $5,700–$12,500 before hardware. The same ten openings in solid-core run about $7,200–$16,000.

Hollow-core, solid-core and solid wood

Hollow-core

A hollow-core door is two thin skins — molded hardboard or wood veneer — over a light frame with a honeycomb cardboard core. It is light, inexpensive and stable, and it is the standard door in most houses built since the 1960s. It also sounds and feels hollow: it transmits noise readily, and a fist or a doorknob can punch through the skin [1].

Solid-core

A solid-core door has the same kind of skins over a dense engineered-wood core. It weighs much more, closes with a solid sound, and blocks noise noticeably better — door manufacturers market solid-core doors specifically for bedrooms, bathrooms and home offices for that reason [1][2]. It costs more than hollow-core and needs three good hinges, properly fastened, to carry the weight without sagging.

Solid wood

A solid-wood door is made of glued-up lumber in rails, stiles and panels. It is the original door in most Columbus houses built before about 1950, and replacing a five-panel fir or oak door from a 1920s Clintonville or Grandview house with a molded hollow door is one of the most common ways an older home loses character. Solid-wood doors cost the most and move with humidity, but they can be refinished many times. Restoring original doors — stripping, repairing and rehanging them — is often worth pricing alongside replacement.

Panel styles

A flush door is a flat face, typical of 1950s and 1960s ranches. A panel door has raised or recessed panels; molded panel doors mimic the look in hardboard, and shaker-style doors with flat recessed panels are the current default in new work. Matching the era of the house usually looks best: five-panel and two-panel doors for pre-war houses, flush or simple shaker doors for mid-century homes. Glass-panel and French doors suit dens and offices where light needs to pass between rooms.

Sizes and clearances

Interior doors come in standard widths from 24 to 36 inches, in 2-inch steps, and most are 80 inches tall. Older Columbus houses often have narrower bathroom and closet doors — 24 or 26 inches is common — and some pre-war houses have doors taller or shorter than 80 inches, which is one reason original openings are often fitted with slab-only replacements or custom doors. Replacing a door with one the same size keeps the job a carpentry job.

Widening an opening is a different scale of work: the old jamb, the casing and part of the wall come out, a wider header goes in, and the wall is patched on both sides. It is usually done for accessibility. For reference, the ADA door clearance standard used in public buildings calls for at least 32 inches of clear width with the door open 90 degrees, which takes a 34- or 36-inch door [6]; homes are not required to meet it, but it is the usual target when a bathroom or bedroom door is widened for a wheelchair or walker.

Slab-only or prehung?

There are two ways to replace an interior door. A slab door is the door alone, hung in the existing jamb on the existing hinge locations. A prehung door arrives already hung in a new jamb, ready to set in the rough opening.

• Slab-only replacement keeps the existing jamb and casing, which preserves original trim and avoids wall patching. The new door has to be trimmed to fit, mortised for hinges that line up with the old ones, bored for the lockset in the right place, and ordered with the correct handing. In an old house whose openings have settled out of square, the door may need to be planed or tapered to fit — skilled, slow work that is priced by the door.
• Prehung replacement removes the old jamb and casing and sets a new, square unit in the rough opening on shims. It is faster to fit and the door swings and latches correctly, but it means new casing on both sides, paint, and sometimes patching where the old casing came off plaster or drywall.

As a rule, slab-only work suits houses with good original jambs and trim worth keeping; prehung suits houses where the trim is being replaced anyway, the jambs are damaged, or the door size is changing.

Trim and casing

Casing is the trim around the door opening; it covers the joint between the jamb and the wall. Replacing doors is the natural moment to replace casing — and often baseboard — because the two meet at every opening. The choices are mainly profile and material:

• Profile. Wide flat casing with a thicker cap across the top suits craftsman and bungalow houses; colonial and ranch profiles suit later homes. Older Columbus houses often have profiles no longer stocked, which can be matched by a millwork shop at a higher cost, or salvaged from elsewhere in the house.
• Material. MDF is inexpensive, smooth and paint-grade only, but swells if it gets wet. Finger-jointed pine is paint-grade and more durable. Clear pine, poplar and oak are the choices for stain-grade work, and cost the most.
• Walls. Plaster walls in older houses are rarely flat at the opening, so new casing often needs scribing or a backband to sit tight. That labor is real, and it is a common difference between bids.

Paint and finish

Most new interior doors arrive factory-primed, ready for two finish coats; doors and casing are usually painted after installation so the nail holes and joints can be filled first. Low-VOC paints reduce the odor and the indoor emissions of VOC (volatile organic compounds) during and after the work, which matters in bedrooms that are slept in the same night [4]. Stain-grade doors cost more to finish, because staining and clear coating take more steps than paint.

In a house built before 1978, the old doors, jambs and casing are likely to carry lead paint. Removing them disturbs painted surfaces, and federal rules require a paid contractor to be a certified firm using lead-safe practices [3]. Planing or sanding an old painted door to make it fit is precisely the kind of work those rules govern.

Hardware

Interior hardware comes in three functions: passage (no lock, for halls and closets), privacy (a push-button or turn lock, for bedrooms and bathrooms) and dummy (a fixed handle, for closet doors that latch with a catch). Levers are easier than knobs for children, older adults and anyone carrying something, and many households switch to levers throughout when doors are replaced. Hinges, door stops and the lockset should share one finish; changing the finish on every door is a small cost per door that adds up across a house. Hardware is ordered to the door's handing and backset, so it is easiest to choose before the doors are ordered.

Special cases

• The door from the garage. A door between an attached garage and the house is not an interior door for code purposes. It must be solid wood or steel at least 1⅜ inches thick, or a 20-minute fire-rated door [5]. See Exterior Door Cost in Columbus, Ohio.
• Pocket doors. A pocket door slides into the wall and saves the floor space a swinging door needs. Adding one to an existing wall means opening the wall, replacing studs with a pocket frame and a new header, and patching drywall or plaster, which is why it costs several times a standard door. Load-bearing walls and walls containing wiring or ducts make it harder still.
• Barn doors. A surface-mounted track avoids opening the wall, but a barn door does not seal and blocks little sound — better for a pantry or laundry than a bathroom.
• Airflow. In houses with return-air grilles only in the hallway, bedroom doors need an air gap at the bottom so air can return to the furnace with the door closed. A new door should be cut to keep the gap the old one had.

What this means for your budget