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Doorworks
Internal doors

Pre-finished internal doors

A pre-finished door has had its final finish applied in the factory, under controlled conditions, and arrives ready to hang. It removes several days of sanding, coating and drying from the job, and the factory finish is usually more even than one applied in a dusty room. It costs more, and site damage is harder to touch in.

Pre-finished is the single biggest time saving available on a door order, and it is routinely confused with primed, which is close to the opposite.

Primed means the undercoat is done and the topcoats are yours. Pre-finished means the whole thing is done. On a five-door landing that is the difference between an afternoon and a fortnight of evenings.

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Pre-finished against finishing on site

The honest trade-off
Pre-finishedUnfinished or primed
Time on siteNone beyond hangingSeveral days per batch, mostly drying
Finish qualityEven, applied in a controlled environmentAs good as your conditions and your patience
Colour and sheen controlWhatever the maker offersTotal — match anything already in the house
CostHigherLower, before you count paint and your time
Repairing a knockHarder to matchEasy, you have the tin
Cut edges after trimmingNeed sealing by you before hangingSealed with everything else

The catch: trimming a pre-finished door

Almost every door needs a little taken off somewhere. The moment you plane a pre-finished door you have exposed raw core on that edge, and that edge now needs sealing before the door goes up. It is a five-minute job and it is skipped constantly, usually on the bottom edge where nobody will look.

Unsealed edges take up moisture. On a bathroom or a kitchen door that is how a leaf starts to swell at the bottom corner a year later.

If you go unfinished instead

Unfinished doors are the right call when there is existing joinery to match, or when you want a specific oil or a specific white rather than the one on offer. The discipline is the same either way.

  1. Store the doors flat and indoors, in the room they will live in, for a few days before you finish them.
  2. Hang dry, mark, trim, then take the door back down.
  3. Seal all six surfaces, including the top and bottom edges — this is usually a condition of the manufacturer’s guarantee.
  4. Follow the coat count and drying times in the instructions supplied with the door.
  5. Fit ironmongery only once the finish has cured, not just dried.