Rebated doors have been a popular internal door option for many years. Their overlapping nature has many benefits including preventing noise and heat transferring between rooms. As the doors are more tightly closed than alternative options, they offer great thermal efficiency and security. This in turn has led to them becoming increasingly an popular option for external doors. If you want to know more about how they work, then our complete guide explains all.

How do Rebated Door Pairs Work?

A rebated door pair is where you have two single doors that have had the lip removed from the edges of the door. So where you‘d normally see a gap between a pair of doors, removing the lip allows these doors to interlock instead. 

This doesn’t mean they are completely adjoined, you can open one door independently of the other. It does create a ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ door though. Your primary door can open and close as you like, but for it to be completely closed the secondary door must also be shut, otherwise they can’t interlock.  

Rebated doors are usually thicker than standard doors, which makes them better insulators. This extra thickness allows them to sit flush with the frame which is a satisfying detail. They’re generally made from wood but can also be produced as a pair of steel doors for example. 

Because the door itself is thicker, the edge of the door is then cut in half to create this lip. The secondary door can then burrow into this lip, removing the small gap that you would find on a standard door pair, and creating a locking system. 

As you can probably work out, when you seal over these gaps, you’re excluding draughts which is why more and more people are choosing them as external doors. The lip also creates a very secure design as if the doors are locked, they become virtually impossible to open from the outside. There’s no gap to exploit, meaning you can be sure these rebated doors are not only helping to insulate your home, but protect it too. 

What is a Door Pair Maker?

If you like the sound of what rebated doors offer, but don’t want to go through the trouble of replacing your double doors then you can use a door pair maker to achieve a similar effect.

A door pair maker is a piece of wood that will turn your standard double door pair into a rebated door. Simply slip it between the two doors and it will add a lip to the door. This will exclude draught and bolster the security of the design.

How to Fit Rebated Doors

Before we go into how to fit a rebated door, if you are attaching a lock to them, if they’re external doors for instance, then you will need to fit and attach the lock beforehand. It’s much easier to do this whilst the door is not in the frame, and you don’t want to have to take your door down straight after. 

Choose which door is going to be your primary and which is to be your secondary. Generally speaking, the door on the right is the secondary.

Attach the secondary door first. Once you’re confident that has been securely fastened to the wall, then you can move onto the primary door. The process of actually fitting the doors isn’t any different from fitting normal doors. You just have to know which order they’re going in. 

We recommend calling professional help for installing your doors. It’s an easy job that you want to get right first time, so it wouldn’t be much to part with to guarantee that your rebated doors are installed correctly.

If you are a dab hand at DIY and are confident in your abilities then by all means have a crack at it yourself. If you are to do this, we just recommend that you have at least one other person with you to help lift your doors. They are heavy and you are liable to injure yourself if you don’t follow the correct procedure. 

Measuring for Rebated Doors

Measuring for your rebated doors is very straightforward. Your doors need to be the same thickness as your wall, and the lip needs to be half of that. Your doors are likely to be 12mm thick, so you need 6mm of horizontal length between the two doors.

How to Fit a Lock on a Rebated Door

If you’re getting rebated doors as external doors, then you’ll want a lock on them, and you’ll want to attach this to the door before they’re installed themselves, as we mentioned above. 

The lock must go on the primary door of the pair. Measure exactly halfway down the door leaf for the positioning of the lock. Mark this point on the edge of both doors. There should already be grooves in place for your lock, so attach the lock with your screws in that position.

Even if your doors are going to be internal ones, you’ll still need to attach door handles. Make sure those are halfway down the door and completely level with each other. If your door handles aren’t aligned, it will haunt you every time you see them. So make sure you get it right. You don’t want them to be aligned just for looks either, if they aren’t level they’ll be adding unnecessary pressure when they’re being used which can reduce the lifespan of your rebated doors.