What it costs
| Job | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Installed, per door Most homeowners | $350–$1,250 |
| Average installed | ~$800 |
| Labor only, per door | $100–$300 |
| Hollow-core door (material) Standard builder-grade | $150–$350 |
| Solid-core door (material) Heavier, much quieter | $250–$600 |
| Door frame, if also replaced | $200–$550 |
Pre-hung versus slab
A pre-hung door arrives already mounted in its own frame. It goes into the opening, gets shimmed plumb and square, and works correctly. A slab is just the door — it has to be planed to fit your existing opening, have hinge mortises cut to match, and the latch bored to meet the existing strike.
Slabs look cheaper on the shelf and usually are not once labor is counted, because fitting a slab to a frame that has moved over twenty years is precise, slow work. Pre-hung is the right default.
Hollow-core versus solid-core
Hollow-core is a cardboard honeycomb between two thin skins. It is light, cheap, and transmits sound like a drum. Solid-core has a dense composite interior, weighs three or four times more, feels substantially better to open, and is genuinely effective at blocking noise.
The practical rule: solid-core anywhere someone sleeps, works or bathes. Hollow-core for closets and pantries.
What a quote should include
- The door itself, specified by core type and finish
- Frame, if being replaced — see door frame repair
- Hardware: hinges, latch set, strike plate
- Casing and trim, and whether existing trim is reused
- Paint — door, frame and casing
- Removal and disposal of the old door
Quotes that leave out paint and disposal are not cheaper, they are incomplete.
How we price it
Photograph each door plus a shot of the trim profile. Our door and trim package covers three to five doors at $1,200–$2,000 fixed, including frames where needed, hardware, trim and paint.
Common questions
Slab or pre-hung — which should I buy?
Pre-hung, in almost every case. A pre-hung unit is the door already mounted in a new frame, so it goes in square and works properly. Fitting a slab door to an existing frame means mortising new hinges and boring the latch to line up with a frame that may not be square, which is fiddly work that costs more in labor than the pre-hung premium.
Slab makes sense when the existing frame is in genuinely good condition and you are matching a specific historic profile.
Is a solid-core door worth the extra?
For bedrooms, bathrooms and any room sharing a wall with a living space, yes — the difference in sound transmission is immediately obvious and it is the single cheapest acoustic improvement in a house. For closets and pantries, hollow-core is fine and nobody will ever notice.
Why is doing several doors cheaper per door?
Setup is most of the job. Getting tools in, protecting floors, and the trips for materials cost roughly the same whether you hang one door or five. Per-door price typically drops 20–30% once you are past three.
This is why we sell doors as a package rather than individually.
Do new doors need painting?
Primed doors need paint; pre-finished doors do not. Budget for paint unless the quote explicitly says pre-finished, and expect the trim and frame to need painting too — a new white door against twenty-year-old trim looks worse than the door you replaced.
Compiled from published 2026 cost data (Angi, HomeGuide, Homewyse, HomeAdvisor) and cross-checked against Kentucky quotes. Updated from our completed jobs quarterly.