Protect the Door and the Wall

Before you start

• Look at where each door lands. The mark on the wall tells you exactly where the handle hits and how big a pad you need.
• Identify any fire doors, in a house or a shared building. Nothing on this page should hold one open.
• If you rent, adhesive fittings come off and screws do not. Check what the lease says about adhesive on a painted wall before committing.

The job

1. Decide between stopping the door and protecting the wallA stop shortens the swing so the handle never reaches. A protector spreads the impact where it lands and lets the door open fully. In a tight room you usually want the protector, because the alternative is a door that no longer opens far enough to get furniture through.
2. Mark the exact contact pointOpen the door slowly until it touches and mark the center of contact. Fitting a protector by eye puts it near the mark rather than on it, and a handle that lands on the edge of a pad does more damage than one landing on bare wall.
3. Prepare the surface for adhesiveClean, dry, and give fresh paint the time the paint manufacturer asks for. Adhesive fittings fail almost exclusively because they were pressed onto dust or new emulsion. On a rented wall, that failure takes paint with it when it eventually lets go.
4. Fit holders where the door needs to stay openA magnetic catch or a hook holds a door against a draft, which is the difference between a stop and a holder. Adhesive versions exist for exactly this reason and go on and off a rented floor without a mark.
5. Leave fire doors aloneA fire door works by being closed, and holding one open with a wedge or a magnet removes what it was fitted for. In a shared building this is usually a rule as well as a bad idea. If a door needs to stay open for daily life, take that to the building manager rather than the hardware aisle.

Stop and call somebody if

• The door in question is a fire door. Nothing on this page belongs on it.
• The frame moves when the door closes. That is a fixing problem and it wants attention before cosmetics.
• The wall is already holed through the plasterboard. Patch it first; a pad over a hole hides the damage without stopping it spreading.

What goes wrong

• Sticking a protector to fresh paint and finding it on the floor a week later with a disc of paint attached.
• Using a rubber wedge as a security device, which is a category error this site sees constantly.
• Fitting a stop that shortens the swing so much the room stops working.

Where this applies

• The Front Door — The jamb, not the lock: on most homes the strike plate is held by screws that stop inside a thin board nailed to the framing behind it.
• A Rented Apartment Door — The key list: in a rented apartment you have no idea how many keys were cut before you arrived, and no lock upgrade you can make changes that.
• The Garage Side Door — Specification: the side door is almost always the cheapest door on the property, with the cheapest lock, and on an attached garage it opens into the house.

Hardware this job may need

• Door Stops & Wall Protectors — protecting the door, the wall and the floor

Sources

• National Fire Protection Association — home fire safety and escape planning
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — renting resources