How to Plan for Your Screen Door Opening

Wrap Around Screen Porch with Five Bar Vinyl Door

A crucial and often overlooked step in the screen porch planning process is planning for your screen door opening. Not all porches require a door, but if you are looking to access your porch from the outside, it’s important to plan for your door opening. Here’s how to go about planning for your door opening.

Determine the Location of Your Door Opening

The first step is to determine where you are going to mount your door. Doors can be mounted just about everywhere on a screen porch. They can be mounted directly in the center in a section of screening or in a corner. Deciding where you want to mount your door is a crucial step in planning your door opening.

Choose Your Door

The next step is choosing your door. Is your door going to be wood, vinyl, or metal? Are you wanting a decorative insert or a pet guard? When determining your door it’s also important to decide on what width you want. All Screen Tight screen doors are 80 inches in height with standard widths of either 32 or 36 inches. However, some select doors come in a width of 30 inches.

When planning for your opening you should allow around 1/8 of an inch all the way around your door and additional space is needed on the bottom to ensure your door can easily be opened and closed tightly without dragging the ground. Our doors are designed to be trimmed up to 3/8 of an inch around and up to 1 inch off the bottom.

Mount Your Door

After you’ve planned for the door location and the type of door, now you need to determine how you are going to mount your door. Doors can be mounted to existing wood posts or a screening system such as Screen Wall or Fast Track.

To mount your door you will need hinges, a hinge bar, or a door jamb kit. All of these mounting materials are available through Screen Tight. Note, that Screen Tight hinges mount on to the surface of the door. Wood and vinyl doors require three hinges. Check out the video below on full instructions on how to mount your door. Also, for more tips on how to extend the life of your screen door, check out this post.