Door Hinges - A Brief Overview

Most often people will interchange think of a round door hinge when they think of the many hinges available to the consumer on a daily basis. Round doors are very common in homes from condos to mansions and from townhouses to row homes and from lofts to apartments. The reason for this is the round door makes it easy to open the door from either the side or the back without having to turn your wrist, as with a square door hinge, or having to duck your head to the side so that you can look through the window.

The basic hinge design for a door is relatively simple: the drawer style of hinge on both sides of the door and two points on the outer edge. If you look at one of the old style drawers that is on the ends of the door, you will see that the hinges used to be on one side of the door, and the drawer itself had a notch in the center that aligned with the two points on the edges of the door. In modern times, the drawer style of hinges is almost completely gone, as homeowners opt instead to go with a new type of hinge that is more like a lock set that allows you to lock your door from either side but still open it from the back. These hinges are usually either made of metal, stainless steel, or wood. They are popular because they create a smooth and clean opening from the back of the house and also create a large radius from which to swing the door all the way out to the front.

With a square door hinge, the hinge is placed exactly where the slot is located in the door, and then it simply slides all the way out to the top of the door, where it snaps into place. Because of the distance between the bottom of the two points of the outer edge of the square hinge, most people find it difficult to lift a door without first opening it up a little by using their wrist or turning their head to the side. With a round corner hinge, the door actually slides a bit farther in from the back of the house, and this means that you will have no problem lifting your door without opening it up all the way. Because the distance between the bottom of the two points of the outer edge of the square hinge is very small, most people find that these are easier to use than the square ones.