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Accessible living · Showers, tubs and doorways

Doorway widening

A doorway made wide enough to get through, done properly with the header and the trim right, not just the door taken off.

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One flat fee to find out what is wrong. You are told it on the phone before anyone is dispatched, and it comes off the job if you hire us. Read our Plain Terms

A wall opened during demolition, showing the framing and the old pipework inside it
Demolition, which is where the surprises are. Southern California.

What the work is

A standard interior doorway is often too narrow for a walker or a chair, particularly on an approach that requires turning. Widening it means opening the wall, moving a stud, dealing with the header, and rehanging the door and the casing.

Whether it is a small job or a large one depends on what is in the wall: whether it is load-bearing, and whether there is wiring or plumbing in the way. That gets established before you get a price, not after.

Sometimes the answer is not widening at all. Swing-clear hinges gain almost two inches for a fraction of the cost, and for a lot of doorways that is the whole problem solved.

What is included

  • Establishing what is in the wall and whether it is load-bearing, before quoting
  • Framing, header and structure as required
  • New door and casing, hung and adjusted
  • Drywall to a paint-ready finish
  • Flooring transition at the threshold

What is not

  • Painting
  • Relocating electrical or plumbing found in the wall, which is quoted once we know
  • Structural work on a bearing wall without an engineer's involvement, which is quoted separately
  • Any promise before we have looked inside the wall

Ask about swing-clear hinges first

They move the door fully out of the opening when it is open, recovering close to two inches of clear width. If two inches is all you need, that is an hour's work rather than a construction job, and we would rather sell you the hour.

What to ask anyone quoting this, us included

  • Is this wall load-bearing?
  • What is in it?
  • Would swing-clear hinges solve this instead?

What we can show you in writing

Every line traces to a document we read in full. The number after a sentence points to the research below.

  • Clear width is measured with the door standing open 90 degrees, from the stop to the face of the door. The door itself is still in the opening while you measure. That is the whole reason a door's size and a doorway's opening are two different numbers.1
  • HUD publishes the arithmetic in plain English: a 32-inch door yields an opening of 30 to 30½ inches, and a 34-inch door yields at least 31⅝ inches. So measure the opening, not the door. If yours is already a 34-inch door, widening the framing may buy you almost nothing.1
  • Before anyone cuts a wall, HUD names two cheaper moves: offset or swing-clear hinges, which take the door leaf out of the opening, and removing the lower part of the door stop. HUD's own figure for the hinges is roughly two inches gained on a 32-inch opening. On most interior doors that is the entire job, and it is not framing work.1
  • HUD also publishes a tolerance: a quarter inch to three eighths off the 32-inch clear width is an acceptable range for a usable door. A tape measure that comes up an eighth of an inch short is not a reason to move a wall.1

Where this comes from

Every line above traces to a document we read in full. The number after a sentence points to the research below; hover it for the section. If you find a line wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say so.

  1. Accessible construction research, September 2026 Compiled from the US Access Board's ADA and ADAAG texts and the 1984 Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards, the Code of Federal Regulations, HUD's Fair Housing design guidance, the Utah Code, ASME and ASTM standard scopes, the Tile Council of North America on slip resistance, and the CDC and National Institute on Aging. 2 sections cited. Hover a number above for the section.

Read before you decide

The rest of showers, tubs and doorways

The quote is the number. There is no second number.

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