Widening doorways for a wheelchair or walker

To widen a doorway for a wheelchair or walker, the usual move is to swap a 28- or 30-inch door for a 36-inch one, which leaves roughly 32 to 34 inches of clear opening with the door standing open. Thirty-two inches clear is the common accessibility minimum. Getting there means pulling the old frame, cutting the wall wider, putting in a new header if the wall is load-bearing, and finishing the trim and floor so it looks like it was always that way.

Measure the clear opening, not the door

The number you care about is the clear opening. That's the distance from the face of the open door to the stop on the far side of the frame. Doors are sold by the width of the slab, so a "32-inch door" only gives you about 28 to 29 inches clear once you take away the door's thickness and the hinge side.

Now compare that to what has to fit through it. A typical walker is 24 to 26 inches wide, and the person pushing it needs a little room for their hands on the frame. A standard wheelchair runs about 25 to 27 inches, and hands on the wheels add more. Accessibility guidance calls for at least 32 inches clear, and a 36-inch door is the usual way to get it with some room to spare.

Plenty of Capital Region houses have 28-inch bathroom doors and 24-inch closet doors. Older houses in Saratoga Springs, Ballston Spa and Glens Falls sometimes go narrower than that. The bathroom and the bedroom are nearly always the first two doors that need work.

The floor around the door

A wide door at the end of a tight hall still doesn't work. Someone in a wheelchair has to roll up to the door, pull it open and get past it. Guidance calls for clear floor space on the pull side next to the latch, often 18 inches or more, so they can reach the handle without the door banging their footrests. Thirty-six inches of hallway is the usual minimum to travel in a chair, and turning into a doorway off a narrow hall takes more than that.

Inside a room, a 60-inch circle of open floor lets a wheelchair turn around. In a bathroom, that circle often decides the layout more than the door does. Our post on a tub to walk-in shower conversion gets into bathroom floor space.

Try the cheap fixes first

Before anyone cuts a wall, look at offset hinges, sometimes called swing-clear hinges. They swing the door completely out of the opening when it's open, which adds about 1 1/2 to 2 inches of clear width. You swap the hinges and that's it. For a walker, that's sometimes all a tight door needed.

A closet door, or a door between two rooms that don't need privacy, can just come off. You gain the whole opening. Taking off the door stop picks up a little more.

While you're at it, change round knobs to levers. It doesn't add an inch, but a lever is far easier to work with a weak grip or one hand on a walker.

Cutting the opening wider

When the cheap fixes don't get enough width, the opening has to get bigger, and the first job is finding out what's in the wall. Is it load-bearing? Are there wires, pipes or ductwork in that stud bay? Bathroom walls often hide a vent stack or a drain line. In a house built before 1978, test the paint for lead before cutting. Plaster walls take some care to cut cleanly without cracking the rest of the wall.

Then the trim, the door and the frame come out, and the opening gets cut wider. In a load-bearing wall, a properly sized header carries the load across the wider opening, with temporary support holding things up while the work is going on. That's structural work and may need a permit, so check with your town or city building department. A light switch right beside the door usually has to move over.

The new frame goes in, the door gets hung and the hardware fitted. Last comes patching, trim and paint, plus filling the floor where the old frame used to sit.

Matching the trim is a real part of the job, especially in older houses with tall casings and plinth blocks at the bottom. We talk about keeping original trim where we can in our old house restoration guide.

When a door can't swing

If there's no room for a door to swing, a pocket door that slides into the wall saves the floor space and can be made very wide. It needs a wall cavity with no pipes or wires in it, and the hardware has to slide easily. Use a big D-shaped pull, not a little recessed cup, because a hand that doesn't grip well can't get into a cup.

Barn-style sliding doors hang on the face of the wall, so they don't need a cavity. They don't close as tight, though, so you give up some privacy and sound control.

Thresholds and floors

A wide door with a tall threshold still catches wheels and walker feet. Accessibility guidance keeps thresholds to 1/2 inch or less, beveled. Where the flooring changes height from one room to the next, a beveled transition strip smooths it out. Outside doors are their own problem, and wheelchair ramp vs steps covers the entry.

What drives the cost

We don't publish prices. The biggest factors are whether the wall is load-bearing and what's inside it, then whether it's drywall or plaster, how hard the trim and flooring are to match, and how many doors you're doing. Several doors at once goes more efficiently than one at a time. If bigger changes are on the table, see our guide to a first floor bedroom and bathroom.

Frequently asked questions

Can every interior door be widened?

Most can. A door right next to a corner, in a wall carrying a plumbing stack, or in a tight hallway is harder, and a pocket or sliding door may make more sense there. Someone looking at it in person can tell you.

Is 32 inches wide enough for a wheelchair?

Thirty-two inches of clear opening is the accepted minimum, and it works for most standard chairs coming straight at the door. A 36-inch door gives more margin. Wider power chairs, or a sharp turn into the doorway, may need more.

Do offset hinges really help?

For small gains, yes. They add about 1 1/2 to 2 inches of clear width by moving the open door out of the frame. If the opening needs another 4 inches, they won't do it alone.

Safe at Home is the aging-in-place and home safety service we're putting together for the Capital Region. It's not open yet, and when it is, doorway changes will sit alongside rails, grab bars and accessible bathrooms. You can join the waiting list on the Safe at Home page.