How should a particular door be hinged? Left or right? The answer depends on the door hinges – and this connection is defined by DIN. This makes it easy to determine the required door stop.
These factors determine the door hinge: left or right?
- Room doors, cupboard doors, front doors or windows basically have a predetermined direction in which they open and close.
- The DIN left or DIN right door stop always depends on the side on which the door hinges (hinges) can be seen.
- Whether you should attach the door stop to the left or right depends on the practice. The door should not block other entrances when opened. The optimal door direction is often indicated in the floor plan.
Example: If the hinges are on the right when the door is closed, the door stops on the right. This door is therefore considered to be hinged on the right (DIN right). The same applies to a “DIN left” door.
DIN standards for door hinges
The determination of a door hinge for a specific door is derived from DIN 107 or ÖNORM B 5328. The supplementary DIN EN 12519 has been helping as a European standard for some time now.
These standards contain terms to prevent confusion: door stop DIN right or DIN left (in short: DIN left, DIN right). The opening of a door can be determined immediately using these standards:
The stop is always on the side of the door with the door hinges (hinges), whereby the hinges are visible when the door is closed.
Example: If the hinges are on the right when the door is closed, the door stops on the right. This door is therefore considered to be hinged on the right (DIN right). The same applies to a “DIN left” door.
On most doors, the side of the stop can be identified on the door handle: If the handle points to the right, DIN applies to the right - and correspondingly to the left.
The exceptions when determining the door hinge
This practical rule works almost always and immediately for room doors, but not for many front doors: These doors often appear as interchangeable sets where the handle does not necessarily indicate the correct stop. That's why the DIN remains important - it immediately results in the correct stop.
The swinging of the door in question is also of interest here: doors almost always swing open inwards. On the inside of the door, the hinges are visible even when the door is closed.
Some exceptions require special attention: doors in very small rooms and especially locker doors. These doors make the most of limited space by swinging outwards. Escape and emergency exit doors also swing outwards - so a fleeing person pushes them open while running instead of stopping to pull them.
These exceptional doors have their hinges on the outside, which is why the phrases “DIN right outwards” and “DIN left outwards” apply. However, all other properties of the door remain unchanged, which is why “DIN right outwards” corresponds to DIN left and “DIN left outwards” is to be understood as DIN right. Various building regulations regulate the associated requirements for escape routes, such as the Assembly Place Ordinance.
Overall, the striking direction of a door (also: impact direction, and opening direction) refers to its two directions of swing: the door swings to the left or right and it swings into or out of the respective room.
Floor plans determine these two directions for each hinged door in a building. This results in DIN left or DIN right for each door.
