Internal doors - Open or closed?

[8ahwe]

Normally are the doors in your home open or closed?

You are being unreasonable = Open

You are NOT being unreasonable = Closed

Thanks!

Definitely closed at night for fire safety.

Open in the summer, closed in the winter

Open to the extent that we took some of the downstairs ones off to create more space.

Some are open and some are closed. I have loads of internals doors. I don't really pay attention to them. I close my bedroom door at night and I close all doors when I go away on holiday.

Every door is closed besides the bathroom door. All doors are fire doors.

I close the kitchen door before bed. Otherwise open

Open, and always a window open in the house otherwise we get damp and mould.

Downstairs open all the time. Upstairs open in the day and closed at night for fire and privacy

Always closed at night and when going out/away. Largely after watching my neighbours house go up in a fire and flames went from downstairs to coming out of the roof in literally seven minutes. She called us because her alarm kept going off and she thought someone was breaking in. We watched the small glow of flame in the downstairs sitting room burn upwards and out of the roof in the seven minutes it took the fire brigade to arrive. The only reason she got out was because the internal doors all being shut, stopped the fire from getting from the side of the house it started in to the side she was in, upstairs in her bedroom. Gave her enough time to get down the stairs and out the front door. Never left my internal doors open since.

Open as I love the feeling of light and space, although dh and his family are all obsessed with shutting them ‘to keep in the warmth’. I find it dark and oppressive when the doors are all shut. We have yet to agree a compromise!

Depends on the room.

Bedroom doors are closed all the time, bathroom usually left open unless occupied, downstairs doors sometimes open sometimes closed. Doesn't really matter except in the winter where everything is closed to keep the place warm.

Generally all open, but last winter we started closing the living room door most of the time 'to keep the heat in' and not have heat go out into the drafty hallway and upstairs, where the main effect seemed to be to make the bedrooms too hot, while the living room remained too cold to sit and watch TV etc because physics.

Without making any other changes, our estimated annual gas use went from 13000 units per year to 8000, which saved us hundreds of pounds on our fuel bills over last winter.

Only time we'd ever close an internal door is for noise reasons - I close my office door while I'm working, so I don't hear dh banging around downstairs. We close the kids bedroom doors at night so we don't wake them. We sometimes close the kitchen door at night if the dishwasher/washing machine is running. Otherwise, all doors open. Actually, for about 6 months of the year, we leave the kitchen door to the garden open about 12 hours a day as well as often in and out and it's good ventilation.

Please everyone, read @Judashascomeintosomemoney's post and close your doors at night. If there's a fire it's pretty likely to come from the kitchen or living room, where there are lots of appliances, and even if you don't have actual fire doors, it'll still buy you a few extra minutes to escape. When we moved into our current house we had the fire service come round and do a home check and they put in all the relevant smoke alarms but also pointed out that we shouldn't be leaving our downstairs doors open at night. We hadn't really been thinking about it before that and had just been leaving them open out of habit.

Open. Because cats.

Although having read the post about fire above I’m rethinking this!

All permenantly jar unless we go away - my cat needs to get to his cat flap/litter tray/food and water/bed which are all in different rooms. It isn't really possible to confine him to one room at night.

Bathroom doors are shut but all the rest stay open.

Open downstairs, closed upstairs. Cats.

@8ahwe why do you ask?

Closed if cooking (to reduce smell) , in winter to reduce draughts or at night for fire safety.

Open if monitoring a child in another room, being sociable or listening out for the doorbell

I only have four internal doors, they're all upstairs. All always open except my eldests room.

All doors closed at night apart from the downstairs loo. So if anyone gains entry to the house via the front door they’d hit the toilet door and make noise!

Open as well because of cats. Interesting how so many of you have them closed because of fire risk. Never thought about it that way

Always open because of the cats!

Apart from the bathroom door when someone's in there then all doors are always open in our house. When DS was a teen he used to shut his sometimes but not always.

Downstairs are always open to allow DD's wheelchair to be moved around easily. Upstairs are always closed during the day to keep the cat off the beds.

At night all doors closed for fire safety.