10 Commercial Door Definitions

When dealing with commercial doors, it’s important to know a vast amount of commercial door terminology to properly describe your project. A confusion from terminology gone unanswered could lead you to purchasing the wrong goods.

Get to know your future investment by familiarizing yourself with the 10 helpful commercial door definitions below. Some of these definitions you may already be familiar with. Later down the road, when you want to describe that one specific part of your doors you just can’t remember the name of, we hope one of these ten words appear in your memory.

1. Face - surface of door exposed to view when closed.
2. Buck - old school. archaic term for a door frame.
3. Active leaf - that leaf or both leaves of a pair of doors for which the locking or latching mechanism or other operating hardware are intended
4. Inactive leaf - the door leaf in a pair of doors which is normally held closed by top and bottom bolts.
5. Handing - the swing of the door, e.g., right hand or left hand. To determine the hand of a door, view the door from the outside - the side that the hinges are on is the hand of the door - if the door swings away from the viewer, the hand is a regular hand, i.e., right or left hand - if the door swings to the viewer, the door is reverse swing, i.e., right hand reverse swing or or left hand reverse swing.
6. Leaf - an individual door, used either singly or in multiple
7. Jamb depth - overall width of frame profile - face to face dimension
8. Spat - protective covering (usually stainless steel) wrapped around bottom of frames to prevent or minimize damage in this area
9. Stop - part of frame against which door closes
10. Door clearance - the space between door and frame rabbet, between door and finished floor, or between meeting edges of pairs of doors

To put it simply, in the world of commercial doors there is a lot to describe before ordering. If you don’t want to learn the lingo, we understand, you can leave it up to the professionals at CDF Distributors.

We carry Hollow Metal Doors, Steel Doors, Wood Doors, Metal Building Doors, Storefront Glass Doors, Fire Rated Doors, Metal Door Frames, and Commercial Door Hardware - everything to complete all your commercial door needs.