How are doors handled when the new floor is taller?

A test you can run before you order anything

Close the door to the room you are flooring and look at the gap between the bottom of the door and the current floor. If you can slide a folded piece of paper under it with room to spare, that door has some cushion to work with. If the door already brushes the floor or drags slightly when it swings, that is a door with almost no margin left, and it is the one most likely to need attention once new material and any new underlayment go down underneath it. This costs nothing and takes a moment per door, and it is worth doing for every door in the rooms you are planning to floor, not just the one that looks tightest.

What that gap tells you

A generous gap is a good early sign. It means there is room to absorb some added height, whether that comes from a thicker plank, an underlayment layer, or a floor built up over what is there now rather than removed first, which is the question answered in full on its own page. A tight gap is not a reason to panic, but it is useful information to walk into the measure with, because it flags exactly which doors deserve a closer look rather than leaving every door as an unknown until install day.

What that gap does not tell you

A visual check at home cannot tell you the actual thickness the new floor system will add, because that number depends on the material, the underlayment it needs, and whether anything is being removed from underneath it first. It is a real figure and it lives on the product's own spec sheet, not on this page, since it varies by product and by what the room needs. Your home test also cannot tell you whether a door needs trimming versus whether a threshold at the doorway can handle the difference instead, because that depends on what is on the other side of that door, not just what is happening in the room you are flooring. Both of those get settled once the actual products and the actual doorway are in front of someone measuring for it.

Trimming the door itself

When a door needs to clear a taller floor, the standard fix is straightforward: the door comes off its hinges, the bottom edge gets trimmed down by however much is needed, and it goes back on. Interior doors are made to allow for this and it is routine work, not a structural concern. Some doors need only a light trim, others need more, and a door that is already close to the floor before any work starts is the one most likely to need it. This is planned for during preparation, the step where the full eight-step process covers what gets settled before the crew arrives, not discovered as a surprise mid-install.

Threshold and transition hardware instead

At a doorway where two different floors meet, such as new flooring meeting tile in a bathroom or carpet in an adjoining bedroom, a threshold or reducer strip often does the job instead of touching the door. That piece of hardware is built to step down or transition between two floors of different heights, and what these strips are and where they belong is its own answer. Whether a doorway calls for a threshold, a trimmed door, or both depends on what is on each side of it, which is exactly the kind of detail that gets checked doorway by doorway rather than assumed for the house.

Where the height question actually gets settled

A spec sheet gives you a thickness. It does not tell you what that thickness feels like as a step up at a doorway you cross barefoot every morning. Material samples do, because you can carry one home, set it down next to the floor that is there now, and walk the doorway with it rather than read a figure off a page. That is what the racks at the Wentzville showroom are for, and samples go home with you the same day. Bring a photo of the doorway that concerns you most and the result of your own folded-paper gap check. Which specific piece a given doorway needs, a trimmed door or a threshold, is a measuring question rather than a showroom one, and it gets settled at the free in-home measure, where doorways, thresholds and transitions are already part of what gets checked. Call 636-332-0654.