I'd been wondering the same thing. Our doors got ordered yesterday--all 8'. It might look more weird if you had varying height doors in the same area.

Yup, I think varying the height in the same area would be worse. But, for example, the broom closet is near the powder room door. What if they were both made 6'8" and then a faux solid transom done in trim above them? It would break up the tall skinny closet door, but still maintain the look of 8ft where there are 10ft ceilings.

tracey_b - do you have any "skinny" doors in all of those 8 footers?

In the kitchen, I have the skinny-ish pantry door and then a pocket door into the dog room (OK, other people call it a mud room). My cabinets will be stacked 42" & 18" with crown molding taking them to the ceiling. I was almost thinking that making both of those doors 6'8" would be nice so that there is more room for paint color to offset the white cabinets. I really wanted a nice open space for a dried herb type wreath over one door and a place to stencil (or Wall Word) the Beethoven quote about soup over the other. Thoughts?

I don't need to solve this instantly because they haven't even broken ground, but framing will come sooner than we think.

Thanks - Jo Ann

I live in an old Victorian house that has 10 foot ceilings (actually 10'4"), and most of our door openings are 78 inches, nothing higher. There is usually a picture-rail-type finish on the walls above the doors (trim piece or wallpaper border) so the space above the door is broken up a foot from the ceiling.

I'm not sure how relevant that is to new construction, especially of a bigger house (our is small), but I totally don't see any rationale for 8 foot doors. Unless they are very wide, and the height accentuates the grandeur.....and I should say we don't even have doors in most of our openings. Is this a norm in your type of house design, or do your builders have it wrong? It seems to me to be a way of escalating cost: it means more moulding, non-standard jambs, and bigger doors (for now and if you ever want to replace one). Not to mention less framing, and wouldn't framing = structural strength.

Also, I do have some varied door heights, right next to each other too. That might look odd in new construction, but it doesn't bother us... because our house is old and quirky, but also I think because the smaller doors are secondary. For example, the doorway to the laundry room is less important than the bigger opening into the DR beside it, and so being smaller (and narrower) doesn't look unnatural (to me!). But the differences are no more than six inches.

Just some thoughts,

KarinL

KarinL - the "common wisdom" is that when you have 10ft ceilings you need to have 8ft doors or cased openings. This is sometimes taken to the point of absurdity when the crown molding is layer upon layer and that sits above an arched cased opening with thick molding and a keystone that nearly touches the crown. Personally, I think that is all out of proportion, but that may be me.

Our house is based on the Shingle Style and we want it to have somewhat of a "New Old House" look without going crazy (or bankrupting ourselves). We're not going for grandeur in this house. There are no two story rooms. The great room is at 10ft with a coffered ceiling to keep it cozy. The tray ceilings are in the dining room & master so we have a place to put cove molding to hide rope lights for ambiance.

Here is a picture of the front elevation of the house:

Our current house is a Neo-Traditional with 10ft ceilings. All of the interior doors and most of the openings are 6'8" and I think they look OK. I can see where it might be nice of some of the doors were 8ft, but not enough to really bother me.

I think I might just put 6'8" doors in the kitchen and put the area above them to decorative use. The other two skinny doors are along a hallway that kinda splits the house in two lengthwise. I really wanted to lower the ceiling in the hallway to 9ft to bring it better into scale. The problem is with the crown molding interfering with the wide cased openings off the hallway to the foyer and the great room. OTOH, why is there crown molding in a hallway, in any event?

I really think that a 18" door that is 8ft tall will look peculiar, so I need to find some solution to this. (sigh)

Thanks or the inputs - Jo Ann

Actually I think the 8' doors will look best, for all doors. In my house, with between 7 and 14' ceilings (basement is shortest and main floor is highest) the standard height doors look a bit goofy with those grand ceilings (and I'm sorry that's "grand" in comparison to an 8' ceiling).

As to the crown molding...we have it in our hall but not in the rooms (big old victorian). It looks lovely.

Wow, nice looking house. Can't imagine it will look bad no matter what you do.

I can imagine that a 14 foot ceiling would have me considering regular doors as looking a bit stumpy. But for me at 10 feet they're fine. I think 8 foot doors would just make me grumpy, especially any time I tried to throw a towel over top of one or put a hook over the door (or dust the top, come to think of it).

But, if you're already living with 10' ceilings then you know whereof you speak when you decide on door height, vs. my limited perspective. I suppose the openings can actually be boxed in after it's framed for 8 feet if you decide it's wrong (but ideally before the moulding's been bought :-))

Visualizing it is often a real challenge. One thing your current situation allows you to do - and this is weird, be prepared - is to do some modelling. Say you take painter's tape and outline the sizes you're considering putting beside each other? I've been doing that to mock up some decorative touches on a set of drawers we're making, and it's amazing how different it is to see it mocked up vs. drawn on paper or in my head.

Good luck!

Karin

I've noticed 8' doors in builders' homes we have toured, and they seem too "castle-ish" for my taste. I don't mean to offend anyone with 8' doors -- I'm sure it's personal preference, and maybe I'd get used to them if I lived with them for a while. But, for me, I really didn't like their massiveness and I would go with standard door sizes even with 10' ceilings.

BTW, it's a gorgeous home!! Good luck with your build!

Drjoann--our skinniest door is 2' (closet and pantry). I would never have suggested 8' doors, but the builder said that a house with 10' ceilings "needed" them and hubby jumped on the bandwagon. I was kind of thinking of going with the shorter doors and putting transoms above them all. Oh well.

I love your elevation. And, some of what you're doing sounds similar to mine--we're having coffered in the great room (and "library"/study) and trays in the master and dining, too. Do you have an inspiration pic for either of those? I'd like to do the rope lighting thing to, but don't have a pic.

Framing (and decisions) get here quicker than you can imagine! Our framing just started yesterday and had to order windows and exterior doors today.....oh, those pesky decisions!

Good luck!

drjoann-

We have 10' ceilings in our newish build (LR has a barrel vault going up to 14') and we used standard 6'8" doors, ITA with hoosiergirl, for us the 8' seem too grand and manor-like in our open floor plan, dog hair laden and very casual home. Here's a pretty bad pic of our in process kitchen (but now we have cabs on either side of the range and a range hood, so we are making progress, one of the benefits of looking at old pics, you realize that things have moved along).

You have a beautiful home planned, the elevation is lovely.

Good luck-

sandyponder

Thanks for all of the inputs. Lots to think about.

Our current house has 10ft ceilings. All of the doors are 6'8" and they seem fine. We're not looking for this house to be "grand". We have to be careful to not let it get too rustic or cottagey, but it is intended to be cozy & gracious. Thank you so much for all of the complements on the elevation. The shingles will actually be in straight rows rather than staggered like the texture used on the elevation & flare out over the stone.

Karin - we are big on doing mockups. The door to our linen closet is 18" so DH has been assigned the task of doing an 8' mockup. We've found that a very large roll of freezer paper has been a cheap & easy way to assemble patterns, etc.

tracey_b - here is a picture of what we have given our builder for the coffering. We want it to be fairly simple.

This is a picture of rope lighting in a bedroom:

Again, we want it to be fairly simple, but our bedroom will have the corners of the tray clipped so that it is an octagon.

I got that picture from the Inviting Home website which has lots of pictures and suggestions. I've linked to that, below.

sandyponder - ahhhhh, a barrel vault to 14' in the living room. How nice. We have two barrel vaults for deep passageways, but I can just imagine what a whole room is like. Pictures? I really like the look of the doorway in the kitchen (& the tongue & groove).

Thanks, again to all - Jo Ann

Here is a link that might be useful: Inviting Home Molding & Rope Lighting

Thanks for the pics and links.

The rope lighting....is that hard-wired in, or maybe an outlet up there controlled by a light switch into which the self-purchased rope lighting is plugged?

We have 10ft ceilings and when it came to the doors, we werent sure which way to go either but finally decided to go with regular doors with transoms above on doors in public areas and then decorative panels on doors in the private areas.

We have 10' ceilings and all of the doors are 8' except the narrow ones (pantry and closet doors) that are standard height. I think the narrow ones would look odd if they were 8'.

We have 10 ft. ceilings in our new construction and we went with 8 ft. doors. In our old house we had 9 ft. ceilings and we still went with 8 ft. doors. We had a skinny door that was probably 18" and it was also 8 ft. tall and didn't look weird at all. We loved the tall doors. It made the ceilings feel taller. In this new house, we repeated the 8 ft. doors on the first floor, but on the 2d floor where we have 9 ft. ceilings, we went with 6'8" doors with faux transoms to bring us to 8 ft. Right now, the dry wall is up, and the door openings on the 2d floor look so small and wrong--like mouse holes. We did save money going with the 6'8" doors, so I guess that's good. If money didn't matter, we would have gone with 8" doors. Btw, we are building a similar shingle style house. Good luck!

Ouch! My head is spinning.

As of this morning, DH & have a tentative plan, but it certainly is subject to change:

- Use 6'8" doors and do faux transoms above the main passage type doors (into the master suite, guest suite, etc.)

- Use 6'8" doors w/o transoms for doors that are skinny or we want to de-emphasize like the closets and a door to the garage on a short, angled hallway near the barrel arch to the dining room.

We're up in the air as to whether the faux transoms should be glass or solid. A very kind GardenWebber sent me pictures of her 6'8" doors with glass transoms and 10' ceilings. They looked great. Then, gobruno reminded me to lookup what they are doing with solid transoms. I sent that link to DH & he now gets it. Oddly enough, even though he is older than I, he doesn't remember any houses with high ceilings and solid transoms.

BTW - this is our door style. I'm not sure what they have in the picture, but ours will be shaker style with straight sticking:

roseabbey - did you do glass or solid transoms & what did your decorative panels look like?

tracey_b - our rope lighting will be hard-wired and on a dimmer. I'm pretty sure you can buy them at Lowes all year long that plug into an outlet. I'm trying to figure out where to put it in the master bath so that is all we need to turn on when we get up in the middle of the night.

I did look at the linen closet door in my current master bath and then used a yardstick to see where 8' would be. I don't like the look so the broom closet will definitely be 6'8".

If y'all have any other thoughts I would appreciate hearing them.

Thanks - Jo Ann

P.S. OK, the "Wall Words" ... here's the deal ... Somewhere in my kitchen will be the quote ascribed to Beethoven, "Only the pure in heart can make a good soup." I can paint it on the wall or make it into a placard or frame it as a poster or even glue it onto my fridge with alphabet magnets, but that is going to be in my kitchen. It goes right to my heart and how I feel about cooking for my family & friends.

Here is a couple of pictures regarding our regular size doors with 10 ft ceilings. We went with glass over the doors in public areas and then a panel over the doors in the private areas

Masterbed room to masterbath door with panel

{{!gwi}}

Doors visible to all, we used glass transoms.

{{!gwi}}

When we built out home, the outside walls are 9.5 ft (concrete-block in Florida) and the interior of the house is about 12 ft. My husband (6'3") wanted 8 ft doors and I (5'2") wanted 6'8" doors because I didn't want to feel like Alice in Wonderland. We put transoms over the door to the office and our bedroom door to give them added height. Every door is 6'8" EXCEPT the pantry and the linen closet--they are 8 ft. Love the people who did it because it gave me added storage. For some reason it doesn't look funny because the purpose of those 8 ft doors is apparent. The linen closet has double doors and is beautiful! This is a 2,000 sq ft house that has adequate storage for which I am truly grateful!

Sorry to hijack but we are in the same predicament - our plans call for 10 foot ceilings on main and we plan to do 6'8" doors with transoms....My question is - for everyone who has done this, what is the total height of the door with the transom? My architect has drawn in 20 inch transoms, but I am wondering if those will look too tall for the 6"8" doors? (ie the whole thing will be almost 8.5 feet tall). I know the "visible glass" will be less than 20 inches once you add the casing, etc., but I am still wondering about proportions...the problem is the whole thing needs to be almost 8.5" to line up with the exterior windows. Thus, we either keep it the way it is, or drop the transoms to 16 inches and add 4 inches on the doors (ie. 7 foot doors with 16 inch transoms?) Thoughts???? THANK YOU!!

From a historical design perspective, it is acceptable to assign a hierarchy to doors based upon their importance and base height on overall proportion rather than having a narrow or insignificant door bear the same height as an "important" door, and in the process, drawing more attention to itself than it should, perhaps, due to its odd proportion.

For example the 1840 building I live in has 14 foot ceilings on the first floor, 12, 10 and 8 respectively as you ascend. On the main floor, the pocket doors are about 11 feet tall, the main entry doors are 8, and something as insignificant as a cupboard might be as little as 6'8" or 7'. They are also not as elaborately trimmed.

I know there is a current trend to have everything "match" throughout the space, but this sometimes leads to the issue of making aomething insignificant like a broom closet as important as the entry door.
7'.

Not sure it helps, but all the rooms in my home are 10' 3". Not sure how they came up with the extra 3"!
Anyway, there is crown molding thruout and all the doors are 6'8". I've never noticed the doors appearing dwarfed, but having 42" beadboard along the bottom of the walls could be making everything look in proportion.

Similar to what palimpsest described, my entry door and french doors leading off the LR have arched transoms (not sure if that's correct term!) to designate their importance.

The only 8' doors I've seen recently (on home tours) have been in the 'grand' homes with lots of vaulted ceilings.

I would go with the 6'8" with the transom. I love that look. If I had noticed it earlier, I might have incorporated it into our build, although it goes more with your shingle style home than our Tudor revival/costwald cottage. I believe yours is a ranch. We have a 1 1/2 story with a basement. First floor is 10' ceilings with 8' doors. There aren't any super tiny doors- 2'8"-3'. The 2nd floor is 9' celings with 6'8" doors. Basement ceiling hieght varies from 8-10' depending on ductwork and plumbing and we used 6'8" there too.

We picked the same door-almost. Ours is 4 panel (I know 5 panel is more classic, but DH insist on 4). Ours is flatpanel, with not quite square sticking. We thought the square sticking might make it too craftsman.

Good luck-who knew there were so many choices???