Doors for a new-build apartment: when to order so you don't end up waiting
Doors are the renovation item people think about latest, and usually to their own cost. Tiles get chosen over months, a kitchen gets ordered half a year out, and doors get "we'll buy those at the end, they're quick."
Doors aren't quick. They're made to fit your specific opening, and that takes time — for us, 45 days for a standard size and 60 for a custom one, counted from the deposit landing in our account.
This article is about how to fit that month and a half to two months into your renovation schedule so it passes unnoticed, rather than turning into two months of living with plastic sheeting instead of a door.
The countdown
Start from the date you want to move in and count backward.
- Minus 2 weeks — door installation. Doors go in after the finish work on walls and floors, but before the final clean.
- Minus 45 days (or 60, if the size is custom) — production. The clock starts from the deposit landing in our account, not from your call, and not from the measurement.
- Minus another 1–2 weeks — choosing, quoting, agreeing on the spec, signing the contract. This takes time too: picking a color, waiting for a quote, changing something, recalculating.
Add it up, and you should start choosing doors roughly two and a half months before move-in. If your order includes non-standard sizes, make that three.
Now look at your renovation schedule and find that point. Most often it lands right when the walls aren't painted yet and there's no floor — and that feels too early. It isn't.
What needs to be ready before measuring
Measuring isn't done at just any stage.
- Walls need to be at their final planned state. They don't have to be painted, but plastering and leveling need to be finished. Three centimeters of plaster added after the measurement is three centimeters the opening no longer has.
- The finished floor level needs to be known. The floor itself doesn't have to be laid yet, but you need to know exactly how much the screed plus finish surface will add. Door height is measured from the finished floor, not from the concrete, and that's exactly where people go wrong most often.
- Openings need to be at their final size. If you're still planning to widen a passage into the living room or wall up an extra door, do that first, then measure.
We've written up exactly how to measure, step by step, in a separate article: three points per dimension, a mandatory wall-thickness measurement, and which side the door opens.
How to measure a door opening →
Concealed doors are a story of their own
If you're considering concealed (flush-fit, hidden-frame) doors, forget everything above about timing, and move the decision even earlier.
The frame for these doors hides inside the wall. It's installed before filler and paint, alongside the wiring and ceiling — that is, at the stage when the wall itself isn't finished yet. Fitting a concealed frame into a finished wall without tearing it apart isn't possible.
So the decision "we want concealed doors" has to be made before the finish work, not after. The most common story we hear: someone saw concealed doors in an interior after their own apartment was already painted, and now the choice is between tearing it apart and giving up on the idea.
Why it pays to order the whole apartment at once
Technically, nothing stops you from buying a bedroom door now and a kids' room door three months later. In practice, that's almost always worse, for two reasons.
- Batch consistency. Doors from a single production run share the exact same film shade. Two orders a few months apart are two different batches, and in the same hallway that difference can be visible — especially with textured films and light colors.
- The set is quoted as a whole. Slab, frame, architrave, jamb extension, fitting — when there are many line items, the quote shows the full picture, and it's clear where you can avoid overpaying. A single door on its own doesn't give you that picture.
Plus the obvious: one delivery instead of three.
How payment works
For the countdown to be honest, let me explain exactly when the timeline starts.
The order goes: inquiry → quote → agreeing on the spec → contract → 70% deposit → production → 30% before shipping → delivery or pickup.
Production starts from the deposit. Not from the inquiry, not from signing the contract. This matters for planning: if you agree on the spec on Monday but pay on Friday, your 45 days start on Friday.
Payments are non-cash, against an invoice.
What you can do earlier, while the renovation is still underway
You don't have to wait for the plastering to start thinking about doors. A few things can be done ahead of time and save you those same two weeks of choosing.
- Decide on a color. This is the longest part of the choice and the least technical one. Door color is matched to the floor, not the walls — you'll repaint the walls, not the floor.
- See the doors in person. Color on a screen and color in a room are different things: textured film catches light differently. Some of our dealers around Ukraine keep color samples, and you're also welcome to visit our factory in Poltava and see the slabs directly.
- Decide on hardware fitting. We fit the lock and hinges at the factory — the doors arrive ready to install. If your installer charges by the hour, you'll feel the difference in their invoice.
- Count your openings and wall thicknesses. Even rough numbers give you a rough quote, which helps you set aside the right amount in your renovation budget before the money goes elsewhere.
The doors arrived, but the renovation isn't done yet
This happens more often than anyone would like: production delivered on time, but the painters didn't. Then the doors need to be stored somewhere, and there are a few rules that decide what state they'll be in by the time they're installed.
- Store them flat, on a level surface, in factory packaging. A slab left standing "on edge" against a wall for three weeks can warp.
- In a dry room with normal humidity. An apartment with fresh screed or freshly plastered walls isn't a dry room — moisture keeps evaporating from them for weeks. It's the worst place to store doors, even though it's the most convenient.
- Not next to a radiator, and not in direct sun from a window.
This isn't a formality: the warranty applies on condition that storage and transport rules were followed. A slab that warped in a damp apartment before installation isn't a manufacturing defect, and it's more honest to say so upfront than to explain it while handling a claim.
What to check on delivery
Doors should be checked before you sign the delivery note, not after.
Check the set against the spec: how many slabs, how many frames, whether there's architrave on both sides of every opening, whether the jamb extension arrived if it was in the quote.
Inspect the packaging for transport damage. If something's dented, photograph it right away, with the driver still there.
The warranty is 1 year from the shipping date, and it covers manufacturing and material defects. Damage that happened in transport or later on your site isn't covered by it, so five minutes spent inspecting on delivery is worth it.
In short: what and when
- 3 months before move-in — pick a color and a line, look at samples. If you're considering concealed doors, the decision needs to happen here.
- 2.5 months before — plastering is done, floor level is known, we take measurements and quote.
- 2 months before — contract and deposit. The clock starts: 45 days standard, 60 custom.
- 2 weeks before — delivery and installation.
If you're reading this and realize you're already behind schedule, that's fine — just start today. Every day of delay pushes the end date back one for one.
If it's more than one apartment
A separate case is when doors are needed not for one apartment but for a whole floor, entrance, or building. The logic there is different: what matters is batch consistency, the delivery schedule, and the price multiplied across the number of openings.
Separate terms apply to orders like that, and we have a line built specifically for developers.