Door Installation Cost NSW 2026 - Get Free Quotes

What Door Installation Costs in New South Wales

Door installation in New South Wales is quoted as labour, and the door itself is almost always a separate line. Internal door installation runs $150 to $350, external doors $350 to $700, French doors $500 to $1,200, sliding doors $800 to $2,000 and bifold systems $1,500 to $4,000. A new frame adds $300 to $600. Those are labour figures.

The door, the frame and the hardware sit on top, and on a quality external entry door the material cost can exceed the installation cost several times over. The single largest variable is whether the opening already exists and is square. Hanging a replacement door in a sound existing frame is straightforward work. Cutting a new opening, replacing a frame or fitting a non-standard size turns it into a carpentry job with a different price, and the full range of work is set out under door services. Door type matters as much as door count. A hollow-core internal door weighs a few kilograms and hangs on two hinges, while a set of bifolds carries glazing, a head track, bottom rollers and multiple panels that all have to align within a few millimetres across the full span.

This page sets out costs by door type, what drives the figure up, the standards and New South Wales rules that apply to external and glazed doors, and what belongs in a written quote. For general carpentry rates across the state, see the carpentry pricing guide. The figures here are indicative 2026 rates for ordinary residential work in New South Wales where the building is in reasonable condition. Heritage joinery, fire doors, structural openings and bushfire-rated assemblies are priced separately and are covered further down.

Internal Door Installation

Internal door installation runs $150 to $350 a door as labour, with most standard replacements landing between $200 and $350. The lower end assumes a pre-hung unit or a straight swap into an existing frame that is still square and sound. Hollow-core doors are the default in most Australian housing and the cheapest to hang. They are light, easy to trim and forgiving of small adjustments, though they cannot be cut down much before the internal frame is exposed. Solid-core doors cost more to install and it is not just the weight. They need three hinges rather than two, the frame and jamb have to carry the load without twisting over time, and trimming requires more care because the core is denser and more prone to tear-out.

Cavity sliders are a category of their own. Installing one into an existing wall means opening the wall up, fitting the cavity unit and making good, which puts it well above a hinged door, and it is handled as cavity slider installation. Barn-style doors and sliding track systems have become common in renovations and sit between the two. The door itself is simple, but the track has to be fixed to structure, not plasterboard, which sometimes means adding a timber backing plate behind the wall lining. Where the frame is sound and only the door has failed, a replacement is the cheapest path. Where the frame has dropped, twisted or been damaged, door repairs and adjustments is often the better first call.

External and Entry Door Installation

External door installation runs $350 to $700 in labour and involves work that internal doors do not. Weather sealing, threshold fitting, security hardware and correct drainage all have to be right, and a door that operates perfectly but leaks in driving rain has not been installed properly. Entry doors carry the largest material cost of any door in a house. A solid timber or composite entry door with quality hardware commonly runs $1,200 to $4,000 for the door alone, and that figure sits on top of the installation.

Hardware is where the quality difference is most visible day to day. Established Australian brands including Lockwood, Gainsborough and Austral supply entry sets, deadlocks and passage furniture that outlast generic alternatives, and fitting is covered under lock installation. Threshold detail is the part most often skipped. An external doorway needs a threshold that sheds water outward, a weather seal that compresses without binding, and a gap under the door that accounts for floor coverings still to be laid.

Orientation matters more in New South Wales than people expect. A west-facing entry door takes direct afternoon sun and considerable heat, and timber doors in that position need proper finishing on all six faces, including the top and bottom edges, or they will cup and swell within a season. Front entry replacement is frequently bundled with painting and hardware, and is dealt with separately under front entry door installation. Painting an entry door is priced in front door painting.

French, Sliding and Bifold Doors

Glazed door systems are where installation costs climb steeply, because the tolerance for error narrows as the span widens. French doors run $500 to $1,200 in labour for a standard pair. Two leaves meeting in the middle must close evenly against each other and against the frame, which means the opening has to be square and the frame plumb in both directions. Sliding doors run $800 to $2,000. Most of that is the head track and the sill, both of which must be dead level along their full length, since a sliding panel amplifies any deviation as it travels and a door that runs beautifully at one end will bind at the other. Bifold systems run $1,500 to $4,000 and are the most demanding residential door installation there is.

Multiple panels fold against each other on a single track, so a small error compounds across every hinge, which is why it is treated as stacker and bifold door installation in its own right. Panel count drives the bifold figure more than the width does. A two-panel unit is close to a French door in complexity, while a six-panel stacking system across a living opening is a different job requiring structural support above and careful sequencing. Existing sliding doors that stick, jump the track or have failed rollers are frequently repairable, not replaceable, and are dealt with under sliding door installation and repairs. Rollers and tracks cost a fraction of a new unit.

Hardware, Locks and What to Specify

Hardware is the part of a door you touch every day and the part most often left vague in a quote. Specifying it properly costs nothing at quoting stage and prevents a substitution you will notice for years. Internal doors take passage sets, privacy sets or dummy handles depending on the room. A passage set latches without locking and suits bedrooms and living areas, a privacy set adds a thumb turn for bathrooms and ensuites, and a dummy handle is fixed for doors that do not latch at all.

External doors take entry sets, and this is where the specification matters most. A single-cylinder deadlock is the common Australian arrangement, keyed outside with a thumb turn inside, and a double-cylinder version keyed both sides is more secure against a break-in through adjacent glazing but slower to exit in an emergency. That trade-off is worth thinking about instead of defaulting. A double-cylinder deadlock on the only exit from a bedroom wing means finding a key in the dark, and many installers will raise it before fitting one. Multi-point locking has become common on modern entry and bifold doors.

Turning the handle throws bolts at several points up the height of the door, which both improves security and pulls the door evenly against its seals, and it adds to both hardware cost and fitting time. Hinge specification follows door weight. Two hinges suit a hollow-core door, three are standard on solid-core and external doors, and heavy or oversized doors sometimes need four or ball-bearing hinges. Smart and digital locks are a separate scope at digital and smart lock installation.

Choosing the Door Itself

The installer fits whatever you buy, so the door choice sits with you and it affects both the installation cost and how the door performs over its life. Hollow-core doors are the standard internal option across Australian housing. A timber frame with a honeycomb card core and thin face panels makes them light, cheap and easy to hang, and the trade-off is that they transmit sound readily and cannot take much trimming or a heavy handle set. Solid-core internal doors cost more in both product and labour and are worth it in specific places. Bedrooms off a living area, home offices, bathrooms and any door to a room with a television benefit noticeably from the acoustic difference, and the door feels far more solid in use.

Timber entry doors remain the premium choice and need the most maintenance. They must be finished on all six faces including the top and bottom edges before hanging, and a west-facing timber door in a New South Wales summer will cup and swell if those edges were left bare. Composite and fibreglass entry doors have taken a large share of the market for exactly that reason. They hold their shape through heat and humidity, take a timber-look finish, and suit exposed orientations where a timber door would need refinishing every few years.

Aluminium framed glazed doors dominate sliding and bifold systems because the frame carries the glass without the seasonal movement timber has. Powder coating and marine-grade finishes matter near the coast, and thermally broken frames are worth asking about on large glazed openings. Fire doors are not a consumer choice at all. They are certified assemblies comprising the leaf, frame, hardware and seals together, and substituting any component without certification invalidates the rating.

Frames, Openings and Structural Work

A new door frame costs $300 to $600 installed, and the question of whether you need one is usually settled by testing the existing opening, not by looking at it. Frames fail in recognisable ways. A dropped hinge jamb, a twisted head, rot at the base of an external jamb or movement cracking at the corners all suggest replacement, not adjustment, and hanging a new door in a frame with any of those will simply transfer the problem. Squareness is checked by measuring both diagonals, which should match within a few millimetres. Where they do not, the door will bind on one corner no matter how carefully it is hung, and packing the frame is a temporary fix, not a repair. Cutting a new doorway into an existing wall is a different category of work.

In a non-loadbearing stud wall it is a straightforward carpentry job, while in a loadbearing or masonry wall it requires a lintel sized for the span and the load above it. That distinction matters both structurally and for approvals. Altering a loadbearing element is building work, may require engineering input, and in many cases needs a development application or a complying development certificate instead of falling within exempt development. Widening an existing doorway for accessibility follows the same rules with additional dimensional requirements, and falls under door widening and accessible entry modifications. Planning pathways are published by NSW Planning.

Draught Sealing, Comfort and Running Costs

Doors are one of the larger uncontrolled air paths in a typical Australian house, and the gaps around an external door can add up to the equivalent of leaving a window permanently open. The gap under the door is usually the worst offender. A standard clearance of 10 to 15 millimetres across a 900 millimetre door is a sizeable opening, and a door bottom seal or automatic drop seal closes it without affecting operation. Perimeter seals handle the rest. Compression seals in the rebate of the frame deal with the head and jambs, and they need to be firm enough to seal without making the door hard to close or causing it to spring back off the latch. Sealing matters more on some orientations than others.

A south-facing door takes the cold winter wind through most of New South Wales, while a west-facing door is fighting afternoon heat, and both are worth treating before considering heating or cooling upgrades. There is a limit worth knowing. Sealing a house tightly without considering ventilation can trap moisture, and rooms with gas appliances need adequate air supply, so draught proofing is sensible instead of something to pursue to an extreme. Glazed doors add a second consideration, since a large single-glazed slider loses far more heat than the wall it replaced. Sealing an existing opening is covered under draught proofing and sealing, while replacing the glass itself falls under double glazing retrofit.

The Australian Standards That Apply to Doors

Several Australian Standards published by Standards Australia apply to residential doors, and knowing which ones lets you read a quote properly and not taking a general assurance about compliance. AS 2047, Windows and external glazed doors in buildings, is the one most relevant to external glazed systems. It sets performance requirements for wind pressure, water penetration and operating force, and compliant units carry a label identifying the manufacturer and the tested performance. The 2014 edition matters specifically.

Hinged, pivot and bifold doors were added to the scope of AS 2047 in that edition, having been excluded from the 1999 version, so a modern external French or bifold door is now within the standard rather than outside it. AS 1288, Glass in buildings, governs the glazing itself. Glass in and beside doors is in a human impact location, which means Grade A safety glass, and the standard also covers side panels and any glazing near floor level that could be mistaken for an opening. AS 5039 covers security screen doors and window grilles, and AS 5040 covers their installation. The distinction matters because a compliant screen fitted badly no longer performs, and the installation standard is what a tested product relies on.

AS 3959 governs construction in bushfire-prone areas, and external doors carry specific requirements at higher Bushfire Attack Levels. Whether your land is bushfire-prone is determined by mapping available through your council and NSW Rural Fire Service, with rated products listed under bushfire security screens. AS 1428.1 sets access and mobility requirements, which apply to clear opening widths, thresholds and door hardware where accessible access is required. It is more often relevant to commercial work but applies to some residential alterations.

New South Wales Rules Worth Knowing

Door work sits under the Home Building Act 1989, and the thresholds in that Act determine what protections you have. They are worth knowing because a lot of door work falls either side of them. Residential building work valued over $5,000 must be carried out by a licensed contractor, and licences can be checked through Service NSW. A tradesperson must also give you a copy of the Consumer Building Guide before you sign a contract for work above that figure. Most single-door jobs sit below $5,000 including materials, which means the licensing requirement does not bite.

A full set of bifolds across a living opening, or a whole-house door replacement, frequently exceeds it, and at that point the licence stops being optional. Home building compensation cover is a separate threshold at over $20,000 including labour and materials. It is regulated by the State Insurance Regulatory Authority, and the contractor must give you evidence of cover before starting work or taking any money, including a deposit. Statutory warranties apply to licensed residential building work regardless of what the contract says.

Current New South Wales guidance sets six years for major defects and two years for other defects, generally running from completion, and NSW Fair Trading is the starting point for a dispute. Apartment owners face an additional layer. Under strata legislation the entry door to a lot is generally common property, not lot property, so replacing it usually requires owners corporation approval even though you are the one living behind it. Where that door is a fire door, replacement is not a carpentry decision at all. Fire doors in residential buildings are certified assemblies subject to periodic inspection, and altering or replacing one without the correct certification can affect the building's fire safety statement.

Security Doors, Screens and Pet Doors

Security screen doors are a separate product category from the door behind them, and the gap between a genuine security door and a decorative screen is wide. A compliant security screen door is tested to AS 5039, which covers knife shear, impact, pull and probe resistance among other tests. A flyscreen door with a decorative grille looks similar from the street and offers essentially no security benefit, and the price difference reflects the difference in construction. Installation is governed separately by AS 5040, and the reason is that a tested product relies on being fixed correctly. A compliant door fitted with short screws into rotten timber does not perform, and the standard covers fixing, frame preparation and hinge and lock requirements. Mesh type is the main specification decision.

Perforated aluminium sheet and stainless steel woven mesh are the common options, with stainless steel generally offering better security and visibility and aluminium sitting lower in cost. Corrosion matters on the New South Wales coast. Stainless steel mesh in an aluminium frame creates a bimetallic junction, and quality products isolate the two to prevent galvanic corrosion, which is worth asking about anywhere near salt air from Wollongong through Sydney to the far north coast. Pet doors are frequently fitted at the same time and the options differ by substrate. Fitting through a timber door, a glass panel or a security screen are three different jobs, and each is quoted separately under pet door installation and security doors and screens.

Pool Gates, Child Safety and Glazing

Doors that give access to a swimming pool area are the most heavily regulated residential doors in New South Wales, and getting this wrong carries both safety and legal consequences. Pool barriers in this state are governed by the Swimming Pools Act 1992 and the associated standards, and every pool must be registered on the NSW Swimming Pool Register. A door from a house directly into a pool enclosure is not generally accepted as part of a compliant barrier for pools built under current rules. Where a door or gate does form part of a barrier on an older pool, it must be self-closing and self-latching from any position, open outward away from the pool, and carry a latch at the required height. Those are specific measurable requirements rather than general principles. Checking the position before replacing any door in that area is essential, because a certificate of compliance can be affected by work that looks purely cosmetic.

Councils and accredited certifiers handle inspections. Glazing near floor level is the other safety question that comes up routinely. Full-height glazed doors, side panels and anything a person could walk into needs Grade A safety glass under AS 1288, and older properties frequently have annealed glass that would not be permitted today. Where old glazing is being replaced rather than the whole door, that is glazing work rather than carpentry, and belongs with glass repairs and window replacement. A glazier can often replace a panel in an existing door and frame for a fraction of a full replacement.

Older New South Wales Housing

Door work in older housing is a different proposition, and it is the main reason quotes vary so much across Sydney and the older regional centres. Non-standard sizes are the first issue. Homes built before the widespread adoption of standard door sizes frequently have openings that match nothing off the shelf, which means either a custom door, a stock door trimmed as far as it safely can be, or a new frame built to suit a standard size. Trimming has limits that are not always obvious.

A hollow-core door can lose perhaps 10 to 15 millimetres from each edge before the internal frame is exposed, while a solid timber door has far more tolerance and can be planed to fit properly. Movement is the second issue. Houses that have settled over a century rarely have square openings, and the honest fix is to re-square the frame rather than to scribe the door to a parallelogram, which looks wrong the moment it is painted. Original joinery is the third and it is worth protecting. Architraves, fanlights, sidelights and original hardware on Federation and Victorian homes are frequently irreplaceable, and an installer who proposes removing them to speed the job up is solving the wrong problem.

Lead paint applies to anything painted before 1970, and door work disturbs it directly through planing, sanding and removing hardware. Dry sanding a lead-painted door frame spreads fine dust through the house, and it is worth raising before work starts rather than after. Heritage listing adds an approval layer on top. Where a property is listed or in a conservation area, replacing an original external door may require consent, and it is cheaper to confirm the position than to reinstate a door afterwards.

Garage, Wardrobe and Specialty Doors

Several door categories sit outside standard carpentry pricing because they are different products fitted by different trades. Garage doors are the clearest example. A sectional or roller door is supplied and fitted by a garage door specialist, not a carpenter, the pricing structure is entirely separate, and automation adds a motor, tracks and safety sensors that must reverse on obstruction. Side access doors from a garage into a house carry a requirement that surprises many owners. Where a garage adjoins a habitable part of the dwelling, the connecting door is generally required to be self-closing and to meet fire separation requirements, which makes it a specified door rather than an ordinary internal one.

Wardrobe doors are a separate category again, covering sliding, mirrored and hinged configurations that run on their own tracks and rarely use standard door hardware. Those are quoted under sliding wardrobe door installation and wardrobe installation. Mirrored wardrobe doors carry a safety consideration worth naming. Mirror on a door is glazing in a human impact location, so it needs to be safety backed or laminated rather than plain mirror glass, and older units frequently are not.

Automatic and powered doors fall under their own standard for pedestrian access and egress and are almost entirely a commercial product. Supply and fitting is quoted as garage door installation, with motors and sensors under garage door automation. Pivot doors have become popular on contemporary entries and deserve a note. They hang on a floor and head pivot rather than side hinges, need a floor point capable of carrying the load, and are considerably less forgiving of an out-of-level floor than a hinged door.

What Moves a Door Installation Quote

Five things account for most of the variation between quotes on the same job. Whether the opening is reused is the first and largest. A straight swap into a sound frame is the cheapest possible version, while a new frame adds $300 to $600 and a new opening in a loadbearing wall adds far more. Door type and weight is the second. Hollow-core, solid-core, glazed and multi-panel systems sit on a rising scale of hinges, hardware, alignment tolerance and installer time.

Squareness and building age is the third, and it is why older Sydney housing costs more. Homes that have moved over decades rarely have square openings, and Federation and New South Walesn properties frequently carry non-standard door sizes that no longer match anything off the shelf. Hardware specification is the fourth and it is entirely within your control. A passage set and a deadlock are different products at different prices, and multi-point locking on an entry door adds both hardware cost and fitting time. Access and quantity is the fifth. Doing eight doors in one visit costs meaningfully less per door than doing one, because setup, travel and tool handling are paid once instead of eight times.

Timeframes and Scheduling

Door work is quick compared with most building trades, and knowing the realistic durations helps you plan access and payment. A straight internal replacement into an existing frame takes one to two hours, so a carpenter can complete six to eight in a day if the doors are on site and the frames are sound. External doors take three to five hours each because of the sealing, threshold and security hardware. French doors run four to eight hours, and a sliding door is usually a full day once the track is levelled and adjusted. Bifold systems take one to two days depending on panel count, and on a large opening it is common for the frame to go in on the first day and the panels to be hung and adjusted on the second.

Lead times on the doors themselves usually exceed the installation. Stock internal doors are available immediately, while custom sizes, solid entry doors and made-to-measure bifold systems commonly run four to ten weeks, and that is what determines your start date rather than the installer's diary. Ordering early is therefore the practical advice. Confirm sizes on site before the order goes in, since a custom door ordered from a plan measurement and found to be wrong on delivery is rarely returnable.

Sydney and Regional NSW Pricing

Across Sydney the figures land at the top of the ranges here, reflecting labour rates along with parking and access constraints through the inner suburbs. Newcastle and Wollongong generally run 10 to 20 per cent below Sydney for comparable work, with established trade markets and easier site access in most suburbs. The Central Coast, Blue Mountains and Illawarra sit between the two, with pricing affected more by travel within the area than by the rate itself. Orange, Dubbo, Wagga Wagga, Albury, Tamworth and Coffs Harbour all support competitive local markets for standard door work. Specialist systems such as large bifold or stacking units may need a metropolitan installer, which brings travel into the quote.

Housing stock shapes the figure more than the postcode does. Inner Sydney terraces and Federation homes carry non-standard openings, out-of-square frames and sometimes original joinery worth preserving, while a 1990s project home in a growth corridor has standard sizes throughout and prices tightly. Quotes vary more in older areas for that reason. Three quotes on a modern home usually cluster, and three quotes on a century-old terrace can differ sizeable depending on what each installer found when they measured.

Common Problems and Whether to Repair or Replace

Most door complaints come down to a handful of causes, and several are adjustments rather than replacements. A door that sticks at the top of the latch side has usually dropped on its hinges. Tightening the hinge screws into fresh timber, or moving to longer screws that reach the stud behind the jamb, fixes a large proportion of these in minutes. A door that binds seasonally is responding to humidity.

Timber doors swell in summer and shrink in winter across much of New South Wales, and easing a fraction off the closing edge in the wet season is preferable to planing aggressively in the dry. A door that will not latch is normally a strike plate alignment problem, not a door problem. Moving the strike a millimetre or two, or filing the opening slightly, is a five-minute job that people often try to solve by replacing the whole handle set. Sliding doors that jump or drag almost always need rollers, not a new door. Rollers are consumable, they wear out over ten to fifteen years, and replacing them along with cleaning the track restores the original operation at a fraction of replacement cost.

The point to replace rather than repair is when the door itself has failed structurally. Delamination on a hollow-core door, rot through an external stile, a warped slab that no longer sits flat against the stops, or a fire door with a compromised certification are all beyond adjustment. Where the frame, not the door has failed, that is the item to replace, and door repairs and adjustments is the relevant scope. Replacing a good door into a bad frame simply moves the problem.

What to Look Out For

Confirm whether the quote includes the door, the frame and the hardware, or labour only. This is the single most common source of confusion on door quotes, because the convention across the trade is labour only and not every quote says so. Ask whether the old door and packaging are removed and disposed of, since it is usually included but occasionally is not. On external glazed doors, ask for the AS 2047 compliance label and the glazing specification.

A compliant unit carries identification of the manufacturer and its tested performance, and that label is what tells you the door suits the wind conditions at your site. Get the hardware named by brand and model, not described as quality hardware. Substitution after a quote is accepted is easier to argue about when the original specification was written down. Check licensing where the job exceeds $5,000, verify it through Service NSW, and ask for the Consumer Building Guide. Where the job exceeds $20,000, ask for the home building compensation certificate before paying any deposit.

On sites with dust, power tools and working at height, safe work obligations apply and are administered by SafeWork NSW. A contractor who mentions them without prompting is generally the one who also protects your floors. Finally, ask what happens if the opening turns out to be out of square once the old door comes off. On older housing this is a realistic possibility, and agreeing in advance whether it triggers a variation avoids an argument mid-job.

Doing It Yourself and Where to Stop

Hanging an internal door is within reach of a confident DIYer, and there are points beyond which it stops being sensible. A straight swap where the new door matches the old one and the frame is sound is the realistic DIY job. Transferring hinge positions, fitting a latch and adjusting clearances takes patience and a couple of hours, not specialist skill. The tooling is the first limit. A door needs to be held plumb while hinges are marked and cut, and a hinge recess cut freehand rarely sits flush, which shows as a door that does not close evenly against the stops. The second limit is anything structural.

Cutting a new opening, altering a loadbearing wall or fitting a lintel is building work rather than a weekend project, and getting it wrong has consequences beyond the door. External and glazed doors are the third. Weather sealing, threshold drainage and safety glazing all have to be right, a leaking entry door damages flooring and framing over time, and a heavy glazed panel is a genuine manual handling risk for one person. Fire doors, pool barrier doors and apartment entry doors are the fourth and should never be DIY, because each carries a certification or approval that can be voided by the work. Work health and safety obligations on any site are administered by SafeWork NSW.

Getting the Best Value

A few decisions made before any quote is requested change the total more than negotiating on rate ever will. Batching is the largest of them. Setup, travel and tool handling are paid once per visit, not once per door, so replacing eight internal doors in a single visit costs meaningfully less per door than doing two now and six next year. Reusing sound frames is the second.

A frame that measures square and shows no rot or movement does not need replacing, and at $300 to $600 each the saving across a house is significant. Choosing standard sizes is the third where the opening allows it. A stock door is both cheaper and available immediately, while a custom size carries a premium and a lead time of several weeks. Buying the doors yourself is worth pricing both ways instead of assuming. Installers often access trade pricing that beats retail, but where you have found a specific door at a good price, supplying it is legitimate and most installers will quote labour only on that basis.

Spending the saving on hardware is usually the right allocation. The difference between builder-grade and quality hardware is modest against the job total and is the part you interact with every day, and quality entry sets and hinges outlast cheap ones by many years. The false economy to avoid is skipping preparation on an external door. Sealing, threshold detail and correct finishing of all six faces on a timber door are what determine whether it still operates properly in five years, and they are cheap at installation and expensive to retrofit.

Getting Comparable Quotes

Comparing three quotes only works if all three price the same job, and door quotes differ more in inclusions than in rates. Count the doors and describe each one by type, since internal, external, French, sliding and bifold sit at different points on the scale. A list beats a summary every time. Measure the openings and note the sizes, including the frame if it is staying.

Non-standard sizes are common in older New South Wales housing and they change both the product and the price. Say whether you are supplying the doors or expecting the installer to. Both arrangements are normal, and a quote prepared on one basis is not comparable with a quote prepared on the other. Specify the hardware you want or ask for a recommendation with a named product, and state whether existing hardware is being reused. Reusing a sound entry set saves real money.

Mention the building age and anything you already know about the openings, including doors that currently stick or frames that have visibly dropped. Flagging those in advance produces a more accurate quote, not a dearer one. Ask for labour, doors, frames, hardware and disposal as separate lines. That structure makes three quotes readable and lets you remove an item to meet a budget, not abandoning the job.

Making the Decision

The lowest door quote is often simply the one that leaves the most out, so start with the inclusions and not the total. A wide spread usually comes down to what each installer assumed about the existing frames. An installer allowing for two new frames and one assuming a straight swap are pricing different jobs, and both may be right about the job they inspected. Favour the installer who measured over the one who quoted from a photograph. Squareness, frame condition and door size are all established with a tape and a level, and on older housing a quote given without them will be revised. Be cautious about an unusually low price on a bifold or stacking system.

Those installations depend on level tracks and accurate alignment, and the cost of correcting a poor one generally exceeds the cost of doing it properly first time. Get the agreed scope in writing before any deposit, covering the doors, the frames, the hardware by name, the disposal and the position if an opening proves out of square. Written contracts are required for residential building work in New South Wales in any case. Finally, keep the hardware details and any compliance labels with your property records. They matter for replacements, for warranty claims and at sale, particularly on external glazed systems.