3 Factors That Affect Hospital Door Durability

On May 5, 2020 | admin@freshy.press

Designing for healthcare, especially when it comes time to specify doors, comes with its own set of challenges. Institutional doors for healthcare facilities must stand up to intense wear and tear while also contributing to a hygienic environment, safeguarding patient privacy, and keeping noise levels down.

Healthcare facility clients may be budget-minded, but they will not want to sacrifice durability. The action moves fast in most healthcare facilities, especially hospitals. People rush from place to place, moving equipment and patients, sometimes in emergency situations. Doors must facilitate their important work, not hamper it. To ensure the doors you specify are durable to handle the client’s future use, consider the following factors.

hospital hallway with wooden doors

1. Impact Edges for Healthcare Facility Doors

One of the keys to making a door highly durable is adding impact edges. With this simple feature, a wood door can withstand impact from stretchers or wheelchairs or gurneys, as well as frequent hard closings, without metal edges.

Masonite Architectural’s impact edge doors come in a wide range of solid colors and woodgrains, to maintain a uniform look. The vertical edges are completely smooth, so they don’t collect dirt and can be easily wiped down. They adhere to superior industry standards.

2. Impact Laminates and Surfaces for Healthcare Facility Doors

A high-impact laminate provides another protective feature, further guarding against daily abuse. It also adds a layer of toughness to the entire door while maintaining visual consistency.

To create the laminate, sheets of resin are bonded at high heat and pressure. The sheets are bonded to the door core, whether particleboard, composite lumber, or speciality cores designed for fire rating or radiation. The .05”-thick laminate faces with five-ply bonded construction and positive pressure fire rating up to 90 minutes.

3. Door Placement in a Healthcare Facility

How you place doors in a healthcare facility can affect the level of wear and tear they endure.

Doors can be strategically placed to allow for a large enough door for the opening to swing into a relatively small space. You must allow for accessibility by wheelchairs and gurneys and enough clearance for showers and toilets. When you can minimize the risk of doors being impacted by objects, you can increase their lifespan and functionality.

Other Considerations for Healthcare Doors

In addition to durability, there are several important factors of door performance to consider for commercial doors in healthcare facilities. An STC-rated door can reduce noise, improving patient privacy and enhancing their recovery.

Frosted glass can be incorporated into doors or used in sidelites and transoms to permit light while enhancing privacy.

Another important factor is safety. Clean-edge doors minimize bacterial growth and allow easy cleaning for infection prevention and control. Lead-lined doors meet safety requirements for rooms where x-ray machines and other imaging equipment reside.

Extensive veneer options introduce the warmth of natural aesthetic elements, which can improve patient comfort, mood and recovery.

Masonite manufactures highly functional doors with healthcare facilities in mind. Choose wood doors for patient rooms, offices, storage areas, imaging rooms, surgical units, and more all from one source. For inspiration, take a look at how a major hospital in Montreal benefited from Masonite Architectural doors.

Where to Specify Stile & Rail Doors in a School

On May 4, 2020 | admin@freshy.press

When specifying doors for a school or education facility, your first thoughts likely relate to safety and durability. While both factors are crucial to a successful education project, don’t overlook the chance to make choices based on aesthetics, too. Performance factors for school doors need not limit your creative vision or refined taste. Stile and rail doors combine both form and function, and make a statement in key areas of a school.

Read on for some inspiration about where to specify stile and rail doors in a school or education facility.

5 Places Where Stile and Rail Doors Can Make a Statement

Public schools often work from publicly approved budgets with little room for leeway, but private schools sometimes offer more opportunity for high-end features. Higher education buildings also tend to offer more allowance for some luxury touches.Regardless of the type of institution where your architectural school doors will be installed, think about spaces used primarily by adults. Spaces where meetings might be held with potential donors, for example, call for a more dignified appearance. Try specifying stile and rail doors for the following spaces:

Masonite Architectural stile and rail doors at university entrance.

1. Executive offices

When executives invite anyone—a parent, a donor, a colleague from another institution—into their office, the doors make a strong first impression. Embellish with sidelites, archtops, metal inlays, or other features to make these particular doors unique.

2. Conference rooms

As a location where school officials may host guests, in addition to conducting their own day-to-day business, conference rooms require a certain sophistication. A wood stile and rail door can welcome everyone to the start of a great meeting. Use double doors for a more stately look and to ease traffic flow.

3. Libraries

Ideally, the demeanor in a library is more studious and less rowdy than, say, a gymnasium. A library may pull double-duty as a space for receptions, book signings, and lectures, too. These are occasions where guests from outside the school community may visit, and school officials will want to put their best foot forward.

4. Arts venues

If a school is fortunate enough to have a theatre or art gallery, they will want it to look its best. Architectural doors leading into these spaces and connecting them with offices or corridors should look the part. A neutral paint color or custom stain can allow a wood door here to look elegant without stealing the show from the artwork.

5. Dormitories

For boarding schools, dormitory areas may play a role in the design. While doors to individual rooms and corridors need to stand up to heavy use and reduce sound transfer, you may want one or two high-end doors in central areas. These can make a strong impression for tours and parent visits.

Stile and Rail Doors Also Offer Performance Features

Stile and rail wood doors do more than look great. With their superior craftsmanship, they can last a long time. You can also find them with performance features like fire ratings, and STC ratings for acoustics. Combine your ideal colors, veneers, wood species and additional features to perfectly complement the rest of your education design project.

Even if you specify only a few stylish stile and rail doors for a given project, you can rest assured that Masonite can supply all of the different types of architectural wood doors you might need. After all, going to fewer suppliers for materials can reduce friction and costs. Remember Masonite Architectural for your next education project, and source all of your wood doors from one manufacturer you can trust.

How Wood Cuts Influence the Look of a Door

On May 4, 2020 | admin@freshy.press

When specifying architectural wood doors, the options for customization are almost endless. Different wood cuts, for example, can change the look and style of a door. By adjusting the cut, along with the veneer species and stain, and other choices, you can tailor wood doors to meet a unique look and feel for a project. Review the different wood cut options to understand what will work best to create the look you want in your next project.

Wood Cuts for Interior Wood Doors

Wood makes a beautiful building material because it comes from a living thing, each tree a unique individual. It’s also incredibly versatile, able to be crafted into a work of art or a practical object—or a combination of both, as with an architectural door.

Skilled woodworking involves understanding the natural tendency of a particular species while applying a creative vision for how it can look.

The method for cutting wood determines the grain pattern and consistency in the final product.

Rotary cut veneer for broad pattern door.

Types of Wood Cuts for Architectural Doors

For most species, you can specify plain or flat sliced, rotary cut, or quarter cut. When you specify red or white oak veneers, rift cut and comb grain cuts are become options. Choose the cut for your wood veneer doors that best suits your overall design style and budget.

Rotary Cut

In a rotary cut, the blade spirals inward through the surface of the tree, producing wide sheets of wood that “unroll” from the log. This method produces the least waste, making it environmentally friendly and economical. Wood resulting from a rotary cut displays broad patterns and wide leaves. Its random, non-repetitive grain pattern makes it difficult to match but entirely unique.

Plain Sliced or Flat Cut

Another highly affordable cut for commercial doors, plain slicing produces straighter grains and a more uniform look. Plain sliced veneer may also be called flat cut and it’s the most popular cutting method that our clients request. Each piece of wood yields more slices when cutting straight across than with some, more complicated cuts. Flat cut wood may display a cathedral pattern, comprising rows of arch-shaped markings that run the length of the wood.

Quarter Cut

To create quarter cut wood veneers, a log is first cut into quarters. Then layers are cut from each quarter. Quarter cut veneer produces a tight vertical grain, which tends to produce a uniform look that many clients like. It eliminates arches or cathedral looks that can occur with plain sliced veneer. When cut with this method, oak species tend to show a “flake effect,” or shiny appearance.

Rift Cut

With its open grain texture, red or white oak holds stain well, although the grains of white oak tend to be longer. It also contains medullary rays, a natural occurrence of vein-like structures radiating across the tree’s rings. These structures cause the “flake effect,” giving the wood a reflective look. It will be especially visible if an oak wood veneer door is in a location where it gets direct sunlight.

A rift cut, made at 15 degrees to the radial, reduces the “flake effect” that a quarter cut produces in oak. This angle accentuates the vertical grain. The difference is subtle, and oak can also be cut in a combination of rift and quarter cuts.

Library seen through glass of interior wooden door.

Comb Grain

Like the rift cut, its variation called a comb grain, is also available only in oak. The comb grain is the portion of rift cut slices with the tightest and straightest grain, giving the appearance of an almost solid color. Because this wood cutting method yields a small amount of product, costs are high compared with other cuts.

Barber Pole Effect

Another wood veneer option you might encounter is the “barber pole effect.” To create this effect, the manufacturer alternates the veneer leaves between the inner and outer side of the grain. A stain accentuates the difference between the two. The barber pole effect creates a striking look that is not to everyone’s taste. It has less to do with the cut itself and more to do with how the pieces are assembled.

The Effects of Flitch Type on Wood Cuts

A term you might encounter when exploring wood cuts is flitch. Because logs are cylindrical and veneers are flat, a log must be shaped before it can be cut for veneers. The flitch is the section of the log cut away to expose the surface from which the veneer will be sliced. The flitch size varies, but the cutting method will determine the minimum width. A smaller flitch leaves more of the log to slice into veneer.

Wood Cuts from Heartwood vs. Sapwood

A tree grows from the inside out, and the wood nearest the center is called the heartwood. Heartwood is darker in color than the wood surrounding it, the sapwood.

Depending on the wood cut, a particular veneer may include wood from both the heartwood and sapwood of the same log, resulting in color variation. If you want to stick with only the heartwood, you can specify this as “red,” or for only sapwood, specify “white.”

Factory Staining Commercial Wood Doors

Factory-applied stain allows you to fine-tune your color results while adding a layer of protection to a wood door. Factory application helps ensure color consistency across a project. However, it’s wise to understand how the cut of the veneer wood affects stain results. For example, flat cut or plain sliced wood tends not to receive stain as well as other cuts. While Masonite Architectural offers 13 designer stain finishes, each finish produces different results according to wood species and cut, so talk with a distributor to determine the needs for your project.

Whatever you can envision for architectural doors, Masonite Architectural can help you formulate the right match. With a wide range of wood door styles, veneers, paint and stain, and additional customizations, you will discover the perfect look for an office, hotel, restaurant, or any other incredible new space.