How much does door installation cost in 2026?

Installing an interior door costs $444 to $675 per door, with the all-in average around $799 and the full range $362 to $1,236. The door itself is a modest part of that: hollow-core doors run $150 to $350 and are fine for closets and secondary rooms, while solid-core doors at $250 to $600 block noticeably more sound and are worth the difference on bedrooms and bathrooms. If sound between rooms bothers you, this is one of the few upgrades where the cheaper option is genuinely worse in daily use.

This single distinction explains most confusing door quotes. A slab is just the door: it reuses the existing frame and hinges, and it only works if that frame is square, sound and the hinge positions match. A prehung unit is the door already mounted in a new frame, which means removing trim, fitting the frame, shimming it plumb and re-trimming. Prehung costs more and takes longer, but it is the right answer when the old frame is out of square — and an old frame that is out of square is exactly why the door was sticking in the first place. Ask which you are being quoted.

Exterior doors run $957 to $1,458 installed, and material drives the spread hard: steel entry doors are $400 to $1,000, fiberglass $1,354 to $2,057, and wood $2,000 to $5,000 or more. Exterior work carries requirements interior work does not — weatherproofing, threshold and sill detailing, and the fact that a badly fitted exterior door leaks air and water for the rest of its life. It is also the one on the house where security hardware and strike-plate fixing genuinely matter.

Changing a lock averages $150, with most homeowners paying $60 to $350 per lock; repairing one runs $50 to $250. Before replacing, ask about rekeying: if the lock hardware is sound and you simply want old keys to stop working — after a move, a lost key, or a contractor handover — rekeying keeps the existing lock and is usually cheaper than a new one. Replacement makes sense when the mechanism is worn, the finish is failing, or you are upgrading to a keypad or smart lock.

A door that has started catching is usually not a door problem. Houses settle, frames move out of square, hinges loosen, and humidity swells timber seasonally. The cheap fixes worth trying first are tightening or replacing hinge screws with longer ones that reach the stud, and planing a small amount off the catching edge. Replacing the door without addressing a frame that has moved gets you a new door that sticks. If several doors in one part of the house have started binding at once, that is worth investigating rather than repeating a fix on each.