Front Door Options for Tiny Houses

How can you get a snazzy front door for your tiny house?? The majority of tiny house plans call for custom doorways. This is due to proportionality: tiny house = tiny door. The major hurdle is that custom doors are difficult to build and expensive to order.

Is there any way around this? Of course, there is! Try one of these two options:

1). DESIGN YOUR HOUSE TO HAVE A STANDARD DOOR

If you are in the early stages of considering a tiny house, you can modify your design to have a standard door or even large french doors!  Check out Vina’s tiny house:

Pros: Easy traffic flow. Available at your local hardware store, garage sales, salvage yards, and sometimes even for free on the side of the road. Can add an open air aesthetic to your home.

Cons: Your door will not be in proportion to your house.You’ll need to design the layout of your home around the doorway. It will also take up valuable real estate inside your home and/or on your porch. Note: Vina built a large detached porch and her doors swing out. Most residential doors swing in, but you can always bend the rules!

2). TRIM DOWN A STANDARD DOOR

If having a proportional door is important to you, but you lack the proper carpentry skills and finances, this might be the way to go. 

Pros: Proportional door that can swing in or out without taking up much space inside your home/on your porch.

Cons: You will have a tiny doorway, which means you can NOT move large furniture items in and out. So think ahead! Finding a door that can be trimmed isn’t always easy. If you want glass in your door, count on it being even more complicated. You will probably choose a door without any patterns. And finally, the process to trim can be difficult.

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No matter what you do, make sure your front door is: 

1). Solid wood

2). 1 & 3/4″ thickness (exterior standard thickness)

3). Any glass is tempered

I’ve heard of some tiny housers using interior doors for their entry door. This is definitely an appealing option as interior doors can come in a variety of smaller sizes. But, if you’re planning on traveling with your home, I wouldn’t recommend it. Most interior doors are hallow and flimsy. This would not suffice in bad weather conditions or for security purposes. Build Tip: If you plan on traveling with your tiny home, we suggest getting a deadbolt with a key lock on BOTH sides. This will make it more difficult for someone to break in. 

————————— But what door did we choose???—————————

Guillaume and I wanted a door with glass, like Brittany‘s door below, in order to maximize the amount of natural light in our home. We also wanted a proportional door (a tiny door), that would swing in and fit the door opening in the Tumbleweed Cypress plans.

The majority of narrow glass doors we found were not suitable for life on the road. After many hours of searching, we finally sought out the help of a local door salesman. So who is this mysterious door guru, you ask? We made friends with Benny from www.buymydoors.com.

After describing our tiny home and our dream entry door, Benny bent over backwards to help us. He searched his substantial door warehouse and his incoming shipments for weeks – sending us photos and dimensions until we found our door!

Our future front door: Solid Mahogany with 8-lite windows, and originally 24″ x 80″ (a standard size)

Next we needed to trim down our door to fit our our rough opening size: 24 1/4″ x 77 3/4″ (before door jamb). Carpenter Don trimmed, sanded, and applied a beautiful pecan finish to make our door really shine!

Trimming the door

Stained door drying

Our Final Front Door

Front Door – Exterior View

Door detail

Door hardware

Door hardware

Door detail

Door hardware

Door hardware

Door hardware

Door jamb

Front Door – Interior View

So the moral of the story is, you have a few different front door options. Keep searching!

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• Thank you to our sponsor: Buymydoors.com – the premiere online door store and much more
• Thank You Deb Dutilh, for helping us find our front door!