Field guide · Openings
The standard American interior door is 30 or 32 inches wide by 80 tall; the front door is 36 × 80. On a builder's schedule a door is written as four digits, so a 2868 is 2′-8″ wide × 6′-8″ tall, which is 32 × 80″. A door has three different sizes and people quote whichever one is handiest: the one written on the order is not the one framed into the wall, and neither is the one your sofa has to fit through. All three, in inches.
Nominal sizes are quoted width × height, in feet and inches — a "two-six" is 2′-6″ wide, or 30″. Height is 80″ (6′-8″) in the overwhelming majority of American houses. Door schedules and order forms compress the same thing into four digits, feet-inches-feet-inches: 2668 is a 2′-6″ × 6′-8″ door, 2868 a 2′-8″ × 6′-8″, 3068 a 3′-0″ × 6′-8″. Read the plan's door schedule that way and every size below is on it.
| Door | Schedule | Width | Usually hung on |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2′-0″ | 2068 | 24″ | small closets, powder rooms in tight plans |
| 2′-4″ | 2468 | 28″ | bathrooms, older houses, secondary closets |
| 2′-6″ | 2668 | 30″ | the common bedroom and bathroom door |
| 2′-8″ | 2868 | 32″ | bedrooms in newer builds; the accessible minimum |
| 2′-10″ | 21068 | 34″ | less common; where a 36 won't fit and a 32 feels tight |
| 3′-0″ | 3068 | 36″ | primary suites, double doors, anywhere you want ease |
| Opening | Typical size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Front entry door | 36 × 80″ | the standard; 42″ and 96″-tall on larger houses |
| Secondary exterior | 30–32 × 80″ | side, garage-to-house, utility |
| Sliding patio (2-panel) | 60 / 72 / 96 × 80″ | only one panel opens — clear width is about half |
| French / double | 60 / 72 × 80″ | both leaves open — the widest way into most houses |
| Garage, single | 8–9′ × 7′ | 9′ is the modern default |
| Garage, double | 16′ × 7′ | 8′ tall on trucks-and-lifts builds |
The sliding-patio line is the one that catches people out on delivery day. A 72″ slider sounds generous until you remember the fixed panel never moves: you get roughly 34–35″ of actual opening, no better than a front door.
This is the part that causes the arguments.
Measure the clear opening yourself — door open, tape from the face of the slab to the opposite stop. Lifting the door off its hinges buys most of that back, and it is the cheapest trick in moving.
| Type | Opening widths | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Bifold, single | 24 / 30 / 36″ | folded panels still block ~2″ each side |
| Bifold, pair | 48 / 60 / 72″ | reach-in closets |
| Bypass (sliding) | 48–96″ | half the opening is always covered |
| 24–36″ | rough opening ≈ 2× slab width + 1″ | |
| Barn (surface slide) | 36–42″ | slab overlaps the opening 2–3″ each side |
Two numbers get quoted constantly, and they mean different things:
Verify locally. Codes are adopted and amended jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and remodels get treated differently from new construction. Treat the above as the shape of the rule and your building department as the authority.
Here is the same door written four ways, which is why four people can argue about it and all be right.
| Called | Number | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Nominal | 30 × 80″ | the order, the price list, the showroom tag |
| Slab | 30 × 80 × 1⅜″ | the physical door; 1¾″ if it were exterior |
| Rough opening | ≈ 32 × 82½″ | the framer — slab + 2″ wide, + 2½″ tall |
| Clear opening | ≈ 28″ | the mover, and every piece of furniture |
Where the two inches of rough opening go. The jamb legs are ¾″ of stock each side, and the rest is shim gap — the slack a carpenter needs to plumb a frame inside a wall that is never plumb. The jamb's width is a separate number and it matches the wall: a 2×4 wall is 3½″ of stud plus ½″ of drywall each side, so the stock jamb is 4 9/16″, sized a sixteenth proud so the casing lands on wood rather than short of it. A 2×6 wall takes 6 9/16″. Ordering the wrong jamb width is a same-day discovery and an expensive one.
Where the clear opening goes. Open the door to 90° and the slab stands inside the frame: its own 1⅜″ of thickness sits in the opening, and the stop moulding takes a little more. That is the 1½–2″ you lose, and it is why a 32″ door — the nominal figure quoted for accessible routes — is borderline against a 32″ clear-width requirement, and why accessible design specifies a 36″ door instead.
The height nobody checks. A prehung is set with its jamb legs cut for the finished floor. Install it on bare subfloor, lay three-quarter-inch hardwood afterwards, and the door drags; undercut it for carpet that never arrives and it hangs over a gap. Trades leave an undercut sized to the flooring — verify the number against the actual floor going in, because nobody publishes one that covers your build.
For an American interior door, 30 inches wide by 80 inches tall — quoted on the order as 2′-6″ by 6′-8″. Bedrooms in newer builds go to 32 inches, primary suites and anywhere you want ease go to 36. The front door is 36 by 80 almost universally, because the IRC asks one exterior door to give 32 inches of clear width and a 36-inch door is how you get there comfortably.
A 2′-8″ by 6′-8″ door, which is 32 inches wide by 80 tall. Door schedules and lumber-yard orders write a size as four digits, feet and inches of width then feet and inches of height: 2668 is a 30-inch door, 2868 a 32, 3068 a 36, and a 2468 is 28. The height is almost always 68 (80 inches), so the first two digits are the ones to read. Those are nominal slab sizes; the rough opening runs about 2 inches wider and the clear opening about 1½ to 2 inches narrower.
About 38 inches wide by 82½ inches tall for a standard prehung unit — roughly the slab width plus 2 inches and the slab height plus 2½. The extra goes to the jamb legs and the shim gap that lets the carpenter plumb the frame in a wall that is never quite plumb. A 30-inch door wants about 32 by 82½. Framers work to the rough opening; check the specific unit's instructions, since manufacturers vary by a fraction.
About 30 inches. With the door standing open at 90 degrees, the slab's own thickness and the stop moulding intrude on the frame, so the clear width runs roughly 1½ to 2 inches under nominal. A 36-inch door gives about 34, a 30-inch door about 28. That is the only number furniture cares about — measure it yourself, door open, tape from the face of the slab to the opposite stop.
Eighty inches, or 6′-8″, in the overwhelming majority of American houses — which is why an 80-inch header height is baked into stud lengths and stair headroom alike. Newer construction and higher-ceiling rooms increasingly use 84-inch (7′-0″) and 96-inch (8′-0″) doors on the main floor. Interior slabs are 1⅜ inches thick and exterior slabs 1¾, which is why an exterior slab will not drop into an interior frame.
About half the unit. On a two-panel slider one panel is fixed and never moves, so a 72-inch door gives roughly 34 to 35 inches of actual passage — no better than a front door, and the reason sliders catch people out on delivery day. A French or double door is the honest wide opening: both leaves swing, so a 72-inch pair gives most of 68 inches once the astragal is subtracted.
Door sizes only matter in relation to something you're trying to move through them. Poché's doorway tool marks every opening on your actual floor plan once — then every piece you place or shop is checked against your real openings, not a generic 36″ assumption. Where the vendor publishes carton dimensions, the verdict is asserted from those; where it's estimating, it says so and tells you to verify.
The doorway calculator does the tilt math in a few seconds — or upload your plan and mark every opening once, free.
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