Door Hardware Blog

What do I need to know before ordering door hardware?

This may be a question you have, so lets go over some of the things you need to know, before you order a door knob/lever or deadbolt.

Measurements

Door Preparation:

Most of the door knobs on our site don’t need many measurements at all. You will need to make sure that you door hardware fits a standard door preparation. If you don’t know what that is, look over the diagrams below. The first diagram is a standard prep for most likely a standard interior door. If you are ordering a Handleset or Knob and a Deadbolt, the second diagram is the standard prep for something like that (if your door measures different from 5 1/2″ CC, please give us a call).

Backset:

The backset is the distance from the edge of your door to the center of the bore hole (the big hole where the doorknob is mounted). The easiest way to figure out what you need is to measure from the edge of the door where the latch goes in and out to the highest part of your bore hole, or the highest part of the existing knob’s backplate.

Almost all of the ones on our site are either 2 3/8″ or 2 3/4″, although we do have 2″ backset deadbolt from Brass Accents. If there is not an option on our site to choose a backset measurement, it means that it adjusts from 2 3/8″ to 2 3/4″. If not, you probably should take out the ruler.

Door Thickness:

Standard door thickness is 1 3/4″ – 2″. If you have a door that is over that thickness, Emtek has a lot of hardware that can fit up to 3″ thick. So as long as your doors are standard, you won’t need to worry about that part when ordering anything on the site.

Door Handing

Door handing is a lot easier than it sounds. Lots of the brands make this super easy, where they are interchangeable and you change the left hand to right hand vise versa. But some of brands require handing, so here is a diagram to help you determine what you have.

	Stand facing the door on the outside – If it’s a locking door, stand on the side of the door where you would insert a key (or unlocking tool if it would be a privacy lock).
	If the hinges are on the left, it’s a left hand door. If the hinges are on the right, it’s a right hand door.

These are just the main things you will need to know before placing an order. You will still need to choose a style and the finish and all that fun stuff. But this should help you get started. Make sure to specify your keying instructions… keying all alike is free! If you need master keying give us a call.

Happy shopping and happy weekend!