Before finish, before brand, before anything else: what does the door need to do?

Get this wrong and the hardware arrives looking perfect and will not do the job. It is the most common ordering error we see, and it is the easiest to avoid.

The five functions

Passage

A lever and a latch, no lock. The door latches shut and opens from either side at all times.

Use it on: bedrooms, living areas, hallways, walk in robes, laundry, linen cupboards, anywhere that never needs locking.

Privacy

A lever and a latch with a snib or turn on the inside, and an emergency release on the outside so the door can be opened from outside if someone is in trouble.

Use it on: bathrooms, ensuites, powder rooms, toilets, the home office, bedrooms where locking matters.

Privacy sets use a different latch to passage sets. You cannot convert one to the other by swapping the handle.

Entrance

A lever or knob with a keyed lock built in, so the door locks with a key from outside and usually a turn from inside.

Use it on: back doors, garage side doors, laundry external doors, sheds, and secondary entrances generally.

On a front door, most projects use a pull handle with a separate deadbolt or a mortice lock rather than an entrance set, because it looks better and locks harder.

Lever set, sometimes called a half set

The handles only. No latch included.

Use it when: a mortice lock is already fitted and working, or when the lock is being supplied separately. Common on front doors and on heritage work.

This is the one people order by accident. If you buy a lever set expecting a working door, you will be missing the latch.

Dummy

A fixed handle with no mechanism at all. It does not turn and it does not latch. The door is held shut by a magnetic catch or a roller catch.

Use it on: wardrobes, robe doors, linen cupboards, and the inactive leaf of a double door where the handle is there for symmetry.

Dummy sets are sold as singles or pairs. A wardrobe with two doors usually needs two singles, not one pair, so check what you are ordering.

A typical house, room by room

A rough guide. Your project will vary, but this is the usual pattern.

• Front door: entrance pull handle plus deadbolt, or a mortice lock with a lever set
• Back and garage side doors: entrance set, or passage set plus deadbolt
• Bedrooms: passage, or privacy if the client wants locks
• Bathroom, ensuite, powder room, toilet: privacy
• Living, dining, hallway: passage
• Laundry, internal: passage
• Study or home office: privacy is worth considering
• Walk in robe: passage, or dummy with a catch
• Wardrobe and linen: dummy with a magnetic catch
• Cavity sliders: flush pulls, with a privacy set version on bathrooms

The things people forget

Function is only part of the order. A schedule is usually short on these:

• Hinges. Three per leaf on heavy or glazed doors, two on light internal doors
• Door stops. One per door that can hit a wall or cabinetry, and worth thinking about before the handle marks the plaster
• Flush bolts on the inactive leaf of every double door
• Rebate kits if the doors are rebated, for the latch and separately for the deadbolt
• Strikes and adaptor plates when retrofitting over existing holes
• Longer spindles for doors thicker than about 45mm

This is most of what our scheduling service catches. A handle list is easy. A complete schedule is where jobs get held up.

Not sure?

Send us your door list, even roughly written, and we will mark up what each opening needs. No charge and no obligation.

Call 1300 522 163 or email sales@entry-point.com.au.

Whole project? Send the plans and we will write the full hardware schedule, door by door. See how it works.

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