9 Signs Your Front Door Needs Replacing (and 3 That Only Need a Repair)

The three-minute check, before anyone quotes you

Nearly everyone who calls us about a drafty door has already decided they need a new one. About a fifth of them do not. These three tests separate the two cases, they cost nothing, and two of them come straight out of the Department of Energy's own guidance on finding air leaks.

1. 01
   The daylight test

   Close the door, turn off the porch light, and look at the whole perimeter from inside on a bright day. DOE puts it plainly: "If you can see daylight around a door or window frame, then the door or window leaks." Note where — an even hairline all the way round is a seal problem; light at one corner and not the other means the door or the frame is out of square.
2. 02
   The dollar-bill test

   DOE again: "Shut a door or window on a dollar bill. If you can pull the dollar bill out without it dragging, you’re losing energy." Do it every foot or so around the edge, not just at the handle. A bill that drags at the top and slides free at the bottom is telling you the slab is bowed.
3. 03
   The thumb test

   Press hard into the sill, the bottom six inches of both jambs, and the door’s own bottom rail. Sound wood does not move. Wood that gives, dimples or sounds hollow is rot, and rot is the one finding that ends the conversation — it is a frame job, not a panel job. Check after a rain; dry rot hides until the wood is wet.

Write down what each test showed. Every decision below turns on those three answers, and an installer who asks you for them is worth more than one who does not.

Nine signs it is the door, not the weatherstrip

Galve's own answer on the front & entry doors page lists the three we see most — "drafts you can feel along the edge in winter, a door that sticks or has to be slammed (the frame has shifted), and any visible rot, warping, or daylight around the threshold." Here is the full list, in the order we check them, with what each one actually means.

1. Daylight around the closed door that new weatherstripping will not close

Weatherstripping is a wear part; a flat one is a repair. But when a fresh, correctly fitted seal still leaves a visible gap, the gap is dimensional — the slab and the frame no longer match each other, and a compression seal has nothing left to compress against. DOE describes how a door gets there: an exterior door "can contribute significantly to air leakage… especially if it's old, uninsulated, improperly installed, and/or improperly air sealed. After years of use the weatherstripping wears down, so air leakage increases as the door ages."

2. Soft wood in the sill, the jamb bottoms or the door's bottom rail

This is the sign that settles it. Rot means water has been sitting somewhere for seasons, and it is almost never confined to the inch you can see. A new slab hung in a rotted frame is money spent on the one part that was still fine. It is also why a "slab-only" quote on a rotted opening is a red flag — the frame has to come out, be replaced, and be flashed properly with a sill pan, or the new door starts the same clock.

3. The slab is warped or bowed

Hold a straightedge against the face, or read it off the dollar-bill test: the door seals at the top and gaps at the bottom, or the reverse. Wood doors bow with seasonal humidity; steel skins bow from heat, which is why a glass storm door on a sunny exposure can cook the door behind it — see our storm door guide for the direct-sun warning. A bowed slab cannot be shimmed flat. It gets replaced.

4. You have to slam it, or lift it, to lock it

If you have already moved the strike plate once and the deadbolt is fighting you again, the frame is racking — the opening is no longer square, usually from settlement or from a jamb that was never shimmed properly. Chasing it with a chisel widens the mortise until the plate has nothing to hold. This is the single most common call we get, and it is the one people wait longest on because the door still technically closes.

5. Rust through a steel skin

A dent in a steel door is cosmetic. A scratch or a dent that breaks the primer is not: once the skin is breached, water reaches the steel and the foam core behind it, and it works outward from the inside. Surface rust you catch early sands and repaints. Rust with a soft spot or a hole is a replacement — there is no way to re-seal the core.

6. Split panels, delaminating skin, or finish failed to the substrate

On a wood door, a panel split through is a water path straight into the joinery. On fiberglass, a skin lifting at an edge means the bond has failed and the core is exposed. Peeling paint alone is cosmetic — that is a weekend, not a project. Paint gone to bare, grey, fuzzy wood over a large area has been failing long enough to matter.

7. Water getting inside at the threshold

Staining on the floor inside the door, swollen casing, or interior paint lifting at the bottom of the jamb all mean the sill pan and flashing failed or were never there. DOE's air-sealing guide is blunt about where that goes: air leaks "can also let in moisture that can warp and damage wood and lead to mold." A new threshold on an unflashed opening is a patch on a plumbing problem.

8. Fogged or clouded glass in the lite

A haze between the panes you cannot wipe off means the sealed insulating unit has lost its seal and its gas fill. On most entry doors the lite frame is not serviceable, so the choice is a new slab or living with it. It is not urgent — a performance and appearance loss, not a failure that spreads.

9. The jamb will not hold a strike plate

Screws that spin, a plate that pulls proud of the jamb, or a strike area re-drilled so many times there is nothing solid left. Almost no forced entry goes through the door slab — it goes through the jamb, where a strike plate tears out of soft wood. On a sound frame the fix is a heavy strike plate with 3" screws into the framing. On a frame that will not hold them, there is no fix short of a new unit.

Three symptoms that are only a repair

These three account for most "my door is drafty" calls, and none of them is worth a new door. If your three-minute check landed here, do this instead and check again next winter.

All three are an hour of work with hardware-store parts. If you would rather not do it yourself, a handyman is the right call — this is not a door-company job, and we will tell you so on the phone.

Why the frame, not the slab, decides

The reason the nine and the three split the way they do is that a door is two products. The slab is the panel that swings. The frame — jambs, head, sill, brickmold — is what holds it square and keeps water out. A slab is replaceable on its own and costs less. A frame is not: replacing it means the trim comes off, the opening gets re-flashed, and the whole thing is set plumb again.

• Sound frame, bad slab (signs 3, 5, 6, 8) — a new slab or a prehung unit both work. Ask for both prices.
• Bad frame (signs 2, 4, 7, 9) — prehung, every time. A slab hung in a rotted or racked frame inherits every problem the old door had, and the new door gets blamed for it.
• Neither (the three repairs) — hardware and weatherstrip.

Which is why the thumb test matters more than the draft you can feel: a draft tells you something is open, soft wood tells you what it will cost. If you are pricing the job, our St. Louis front door cost guide breaks down what sits inside an installed number, and fiberglass vs. steel vs. wood covers which material not to repeat the mistake with.

What a failing door actually costs while you decide

Be careful with the energy argument — in either direction. One leaking door is not heating your street, and anyone who tells you a new door pays for itself in a winter is selling. What DOE says is about the whole house: "By sealing uncontrolled air leaks, you can save 10%–20% on your heating and cooling bills." An entry door is one of the leaks in that set, and per DOE's air-sealing guide the ones "around windows and doors are the most obvious." It is a share of that 10–20%, not the whole of it.

The costs that accumulate are the other two DOE names. Air leaks "place an unnecessary strain on heating and cooling equipment," and they "let in moisture that can warp and damage wood and lead to mold" — which is the mechanism behind signs 2 and 7. The rot you find in the sill this year started as water getting past a seal two or three years ago.

What replacement costs and how long it takes in St. Louis

Galve's published starting price for a front or entry door is $1,890 installed, with a lead time of 1–3 weeks from the in-home measure to install day. Most jobs are finished in 4–6 hours: old slab and frame out, rough opening checked and flashed, new unit plumbed and shimmed, weatherstrip seated, casing cut to your existing trim, jobsite vacuumed. Every install carries a one-year workmanship warranty on top of the manufacturer's coverage. A storm door, if you want one after the entry door is sorted, starts at $680 and goes on in a morning.

What moves a front-door quote past the starting price is the same short list every time: glass, sidelites or a transom, a non-stock size, and frame repair found at the measure. That last one is exactly what signs 2, 4, 7 and 9 predict.

What we check at the measure — including when we tell you not to replace

The measure is an hour, it is free, and roughly a fifth end with a recommendation that is not a door. We work in the same order as the three-minute check:

1. 01
   The frame, first and hardest

   Sill, jamb bottoms, brickmold, and behind the trim where we can see. An awl, not a look. If the wood is sound, a slab-only price is on the table and we will say so.
2. 02
   The opening, for square and plumb

   A level on both jambs and the head, and a diagonal measurement both ways. A racked opening is what makes a door need slamming.
3. 03
   The slab, for bow and for the seal line

   A straightedge across the face, then a pass with a bill around the whole perimeter. Where the gap is uneven tells us whether the door or the frame moved.
4. 04
   The water path

   Whether there is a sill pan, where the flashing goes, and whether the porch drains away from the threshold. The most common reason a replacement door rots is that nobody fixed why the first one did.
5. 05
   Hardware and security

   Deadbolt throw, strike plate, hinge screw length. On a sound frame these are an upgrade we do at install; on a failing one they are part of the case for replacing it.

If your check found rot, a racked frame, or a gap that new weatherstrip will not close, send a photo of the door and the threshold and we will come back with an installed price — usually within the hour. Options and brands are on the front & entry doors page.