What you need to know about pivot doors

1. Is there a benefit to having a pivot door instead of a hinged door?

Besides the different visual appearance, there is no particular extra benefit to a standard hinged doorset - although the aesthetics are often enough! Pivot doors literally hinge from the bottom and top of a door instead of on the side. They are popular due to the design element of how they open. In the past, pivot hinges were used for bigger doors, but now, we can make doors up to 1500mm wide on specially designed 3D heavy duty hinges too.

2. Is a pivot door fully weather sealed?

Our pivot door is as weather-sealed as it possibly can be but not as completely as the standard 3D hinges - if air-testing is important, we would recommend a hinged opening instead.

If this isn't so important, it's useful to know that in severe weather, you could feel a little draft around the door so we always recommend pivot doors are installed in a semi or fully protected location.

3. So is a pivot door suitable for an exposed area?

No, it wouldn’t be due to the points raised in Question number 2. However, if the door has a porch, is set back or has an overhang of a minimum of half the door size then the door would be fine. Read more about door protection here.

4. What happens if I am air testing my new build & still choose a pivot door?

You can still use a pivot door, but you will get air leakage in the door area. This is usually not taken into consideration because of the relatively small area in comparison to the size of the house, but for best air test results consider our e80Hinged or e98Passiv Range. Our hinged doorsets can still be made up to 1500mm wide.  Please note that our doors are regularly tested for air leakage.

5. Will I lose space in the walkthrough area?

Yes, due to the necessary placement of the pivot hinge further along the door, in general you'll lose about 150-200mm from the walkthrough space so keep this in mind when planning.

6. Does a pivot door cost more than the hinged one?

All of our doors over 1200mm wide are the same price for pivot or hinged options. A pivot door does need a minimum width of this size. This is why they are more expensive than other doorsets that are at a narrower width. Doorsets narrower than 1200mm are only available in the hinged opening style.