# Oak internal doors — engineered and solid oak | Threshen > Engineered and solid oak internal doors: the real difference between them, what grain variation to expect, and how to finish oak properly. Source: https://example.co.uk/internal-doors/oak --- # Oak internal doors Oak internal doors come two ways. Engineered doors carry a real oak veneer over a stabilised core, so they hang straight and stay straight. Solid oak is cut from the timber itself and moves with the seasons. Both are sold unfinished for you to finish, or ready-finished to hang straight away. **In this range** 24 doors **Guide price from** £88.80 inc VAT Oak is the default answer when someone wants their doors to look like timber rather than like paint, and it is the finish most people picture when they say they want wooden doors. What almost nobody is told at the point of buying is that two very different products are sold under the same word. Grain, colour and figure vary from leaf to leaf. That is oak behaving normally, not a fault, and it is the reason a set of oak doors bought together looks more deliberate than the same doors bought one at a time over a year. 24 doors Prices are guide prices including VAT, taken from the smallest size and plainest finish of each door. They are not an offer to sell — confirm the price for your size and finish before ordering. - Oak Flush Internal Door In a house with no mouldings anywhere else, a panelled door looks staged. This is the timber alternative: an uninterrupted oak face, no panels. Engineered oak - 35mm ### Oak Shaker Door Flat recessed panels with square edges in engineered oak. The quietest way to have timber doors in a house built after about 1930 without them reading as period. - Engineered oak - 35mm ### Oak 4-Panel Internal Door The traditional four-panel oak door, with raised mouldings. It is what most people are picturing when they say they want oak doors, and what Victorian and Edwardian houses were built with. - Engineered oak - 35mm ### Oak Ladder Door Four wide panels stacked one above the other with equal rails between them. Shaker detail turned on its side, and the door that makes a narrow opening look wider. - Engineered oak - 35mm ### Oak 6-Panel Internal Door The six-panel Victorian arrangement in engineered oak, for a period house with the ceiling height to carry it. - Engineered oak - 35mm ### Oak Solid Core Flush Door A flat oak face over a dense core. The upgrade that is felt rather than seen: heavier in the hand, quieter through the wall, and it takes ironmongery anywhere on the edge. - Engineered oak, solid core - 35mm ### Oak Solid Core Shaker Door Square-edged shaker panels in oak with a solid core behind them. This is the specification people are describing when they say they want the doors to feel expensive. - Engineered oak, solid core - 35mm ### Oak Solid Core 4-Panel Door The four-panel Victorian arrangement in oak with a dense core, for the main rooms of a period house where the door is part of the room rather than a way out of it. - Engineered oak, solid core - 35mm ### Oak Glazed 3-Light Door For a room with no window of its own, three glazed lights in an oak frame will borrow daylight from the hallway. - Engineered oak - 35mm ### Oak Solid Core Ladder Door The horizontal-panelled ladder shape on a solid core. Heavier to hang, quieter to live with, and the version to buy for a room you actually want to shut. - Engineered oak, solid core - 35mm ### Oak Boarded Cottage Door A boarded oak face built on an engineered core. You get the cottage look without the seasonal movement of a leaf cut from solid timber. - Engineered oak, solid core - 35mm ### Oak 4-Light Door Four long lights down an oak leaf. The vertical alternative to the three-light, and the better one where the opening is tall and narrow. - Engineered oak - 35mm ### Solid Oak Shaker Door Shaker panels cut from solid oak rather than veneered onto a core: grain that runs through the timber instead of over it, and a door that moves with the seasons. - Solid oak - 35mm ### Oak Solid Core 6-Panel Door Six moulded oak panels on a solid core. The period shape, with the weight a period door would actually have had. - Engineered oak, solid core - 35mm ### Oak Solid Core Glazed Door Three lights in a solid-core oak frame. The heaviest glazed door in the range, and the one to specify where a glazed leaf is going onto an opening that gets used hard. - Engineered oak, solid core - 35mm ### Solid Oak 4-Panel Door The Victorian four-panel door made the way the original was: solid oak throughout, with the mouldings worked into the timber rather than applied over a veneer. - Solid oak - 35mm ### Oak 10-Light Door When a through-room loses its window to an extension, this is the usual answer. Ten lights in an oak frame, the most glass this catalogue puts in an oak door. - Engineered oak - 35mm ### Oak Cottage Ledged Door Vertical boards with ledges across the back. A genuine cottage door for period properties, where a moulded panel door would look wrong. - Solid oak - 35mm ### Oak Solid Core 10-Light Door For the opening between a hall and a room that gets used hard. Ten lights on a solid-core oak leaf, and the heaviest glazed door here. - Engineered oak, solid core - 35mm ### Solid Oak Glazed Door Three lights set into a solid oak frame. The most expensive way to move daylight from one room to another, and the one that looks right in a house with original joinery. - Solid oak - 35mm ### Solid Oak Ladder Door A contemporary horizontal-panelled shape in solid oak. Modern lines, traditional construction, and the seasonal movement that comes with it. - Solid oak - 35mm ### Solid Oak 6-Panel Door Six panels cut from solid oak rather than veneered. This is the closest thing here to the door a Victorian house was built with, and it behaves like one. - Solid oak - 35mm ### Oak Shaker Pair For a dining room you want to shut properly rather than look through. Two solid shaker leaves fill one opening, unglazed. - Engineered oak - 35mm ### Oak Glazed Pair A glazed oak pair for a wide opening. The most timber and the most glass in one place that this catalogue offers, and the most expensive thing on it. - Engineered oak - 35mm No doors match these filters yet. Clear a filter to widen the search. ## Engineered oak or solid oak? Most oak doors sold in the UK are engineered. The word makes them sound like the compromise option, and for stability they are the opposite. | | Engineered oak | Solid oak | | --- | --- | --- | | Construction | Oak veneer over a laminated, stabilised core | Solid oak boards or staves | | Movement | Very little — the core resists twist and cupping | Expands and contracts with humidity through the year | | Gaps to allow | Standard gaps around the leaf | A slightly more generous gap, particularly at the top and the closing edge | | Trimming | Limited by veneer thickness on the edges | More forgiving, but still limited by the manufacturer | | Typical cost | Lower | Higher | | Best for | Most houses, and anywhere with underfloor heating or big humidity swings | Period properties where the honesty of solid timber matters | ## Finishing an oak door An unfinished oak door is not a finished product. It is raw timber that will drink moisture out of the air until you seal it, and an unsealed door in a new plastered room is the classic way to end up with a leaf that no longer fits its frame. Seal every face and every edge, including the top and the bottom. The top edge is the one that gets forgotten, because nobody can see it once the door is hung, and it is usually the edge the manufacturer names in its guarantee conditions. Check the finishing instructions supplied with the door before you open a tin. 1. Hang the door dry first, mark and trim to fit, then take it back off. 2. Sand lightly along the grain and remove all dust. 3. Seal all six surfaces — both faces, both long edges, the top and the bottom. 4. Build up the coats the manufacturer asks for, sanding between them. 5. Only fit ironmongery once the finish has properly cured. ## Matching oak doors across a house Oak varies by batch. If you are doing a landing or a whole floor, order the doors together and finish them together with the same product from the same tin. Doors bought six months apart and oiled with whatever was left in the shed will read as two different sets, and there is no fixing that afterwards short of stripping them. ## More internal doors [Back to all internal doors](https://example.co.uk/internal-doors)