Door pricing confuses people because the door itself is often the cheap part. The labor cost to install interior door units runs $100 to $300 per opening for a straightforward prehung swap — and can double for slab-only fitting, where the carpenter is hand-fitting a bare door into an existing frame. Whole-house packages, framing changes, and who you hire (handyman, finish carpenter, or a big-box install program) move the number further. Here is the labor math broken out by job type, so you can read a quote and know exactly what you are paying for.
Prehung Swap: The $100–$300 Baseline
A prehung door arrives already hinged into its frame; the installer removes your old door and jamb, sets the new unit in the rough opening, shims it plumb and square, fastens it, and re-installs or replaces the casing. For a competent installer this is 1.5 to 3 hours of work, and the going labor rate lands at $100 to $300 per door, with $150 to $200 the common midpoint in most metro areas. What that price assumes: a standard-size opening (24 to 36 inches wide) that is reasonably square, existing casing that either survives removal or is being replaced anyway, and no surprises inside the wall.
Add-ons that legitimately appear on prehung quotes: hauling away the old door ($10 to $25), new casing installed and caulked ($30 to $75 labor per side plus material), painting or staining (rarely included — figure $75 to $150 per door if the installer offers it), and hardware installation, which is usually free with the install since prehung units come bored for standard 2-1/8-inch locksets.
Slab-Only Fitting: Why It Costs More
Hanging a slab — a bare door with no frame — into an existing jamb is the higher-skill job, and pricing reflects it: $150 to $400 per door in labor, sometimes more for hardwood slabs or old houses. The carpenter must trim the slab to the opening (planing width and height, beveling the lock edge 2 to 3 degrees), mortise the hinges — chiseling or routing recesses that match the jamb’s existing hinge locations exactly — and bore the lockset (2-1/8-inch cross bore, 1-inch edge bore, latch plate mortise) at the precise height of the existing strike. Each operation is unforgiving; a hinge mortise 1/16 inch off shows as a sprung door that will not sit flush.
Slab work makes sense in two situations: the existing jamb and casing are high-quality or historic and worth preserving, or you are replacing many doors in a house where all the jambs are sound and consistent. Otherwise, the prehung route is usually cheaper in total even though the unit costs more than a slab ($120 to $350 prehung versus $40 to $200 slab for comparable hollow-core and solid-core doors), because the labor gap eats the difference. One warning from experience: old jambs are rarely square, and fitting a new flat slab to a parallelogram opening adds an hour nobody quoted.
Framing Changes: When the Opening Itself Moves
Everything above assumes the rough opening stays put. Change the opening and you have entered light framing territory: widening a doorway or creating a new one through a non-load-bearing wall runs $300 to $800 in labor (framing the king/jack studs and header, plus drywall patching both sides); a load-bearing wall needs a properly sized header and temporary support and jumps to $800 to $2,500 with possible permit and engineering line items. Converting a swing door to a pocket door is the expensive surprise — the pocket frame requires opening the wall to twice the door’s width, relocating any wiring inside it, and rebuilding: $1,000 to $2,500 all-in is typical. Barn-door hardware avoids the wall surgery ($150 to $400 labor to mount a track and slab) but sacrifices sound privacy and needs clear wall space beside the opening.
Per-Door vs Whole-House Package Rates
Volume changes the math meaningfully. Setup, tool staging, and travel are fixed costs, so a carpenter doing ten prehung doors in one house will price them well below ten times the single-door rate. Typical package labor: $80 to $150 per door for 8 to 15 doors, versus $150 to $250 for a one-off — a whole-house, 12-door prehung replacement commonly lands at $1,200 to $1,800 in labor. Packages also shift bidding style: many finish carpenters quote whole-house jobs at a day rate ($400 to $700 per day for a skilled carpenter in most markets, more in coastal metros) and honest ones will tell you they can hang 5 to 8 prehung doors a day when openings cooperate. If you are collecting bids for a full house, ask for the per-door breakdown and the assumption count — a bid that says “12 doors, $3,000 labor” with no conditions is a bid that grows later.
Handyman vs Carpenter vs Big-Box Install Programs
- Handyman ($50–$90/hour or flat $100–$200 per prehung): Fine for straightforward prehung swaps in newer homes with square openings. Ask specifically how many doors they hang per year; door hanging punishes casual practitioners, and the tell is a quote that does not mention shimming or reveal.
- Finish carpenter ($70–$120/hour): The right call for slab fitting, hardwood doors, old houses, mitered casing work, and anything where the reveal lines will be looked at closely. Costs 20 to 40 percent more and is worth it exactly where precision shows.
- Big-box programs (Home Depot/Lowe’s install services): Convenience pricing — typically $150 to $360 per door installed on top of the door purchase, driven by a measure fee ($30 to $50, usually credited), subcontracted labor, and standardized scope. The paperwork and warranty are real benefits; the flip side is you get whichever subcontractor is assigned, and change orders for out-of-scope conditions (rot, out-of-square framing) price at rack rates. Competitive for one or two doors; rarely the value play for a whole house.
What Drives Quotes Up
Installers price risk, and these are the risks they see during the walkthrough: out-of-square openings (settled houses where every jamb needs custom shimming — add 30 to 60 minutes per door); non-standard sizes requiring special-order doors or trimming a stock unit; plaster walls, which crumble around casing removal and add patching; flooring transitions where the new door needs undercutting for carpet-to-tile height changes; hardware complications — smart locks, mortise locksets, non-standard bore spacing, matching antique hinges; upstairs solid-core doors (an 80-pound slab up a staircase is a two-person carry, and solo installers price accordingly); and occupied-home logistics like furniture, pets, and dust control. Point these out yourself and ask how each affects price; a contractor who prices them upfront beats one who discovers them billably.
Regional Rates and Getting Comparable Bids
Geography moves every number in this guide by 30 to 50 percent. Coastal metros (San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York) sit at the top of each range and beyond — $250 to $400 for a single prehung swap is normal there — while Midwest and Southern markets routinely deliver the low ends. To make bids comparable, hand every bidder the same one-page scope: door count and sizes, prehung or slab, who supplies doors and hardware, casing replaced or reused, painting included or excluded, haul-away included, and payment terms. Ask each for price per additional door discovered mid-job (closets multiply) and whether out-of-square openings are included or billed hourly. Three bids gathered against an identical scope will usually cluster within 15 percent, and the outlier — high or low — is telling you something worth asking about.
The DIY Time Reality
A prehung install is a legitimate DIY job — and almost everyone underestimates it. Budget a full half-day for your first door: 30 minutes of demo, then the actual craft, which is shimming. Getting the hinge jamb dead plumb in both directions (a 6-foot level, shims at each hinge, and long screws through to the framing), holding an even 1/8-inch reveal around the slab, and keeping the latch aligned takes patient iteration the first few times. Your second door takes half as long; by the fourth you are approaching pro pace. Slab fitting is a different tier — without a router, hinge template, and boring jig ($60 to $150 in jigs), hand-chiseled mortises punish beginners, and one blown mortise ruins a $150 slab. Honest guidance: DIY prehung swaps and pocket the $150 per door; hire out slab work, heavy solid-core doors, and anything in a house old enough to vote.
