Understanding Different Types of Doors and Windows in Architectural Floor Plans

When you are looking at a floor plan, this is a plane that is generally drawn as a horizontal slice at about four and a half feet, looking down to the ground. So, right here is a drawing of a standard hinged door. And so you can see the gray area filled here and there represents the wall.

This rectangle here is the door. This area here is the hinge point. Here is where the door meets the wall, and this arc indicates the swing path of the door when closed.

This is representative, where typically a standard width of 1⁄2 or 1 3⁄4 inches is used for the width of the door, but we always show the hinge point and where the door is closed. Here we have a double door. With a double door, one is usually fixed or generally closed, the other is the dominant door.

Like with the single door, we have our hinge points. And what you can see in some drawings is that they can have a dashed door line in this area, which would mean that this is the door that is generally closed. Here we have folding or closet doors.

Again, you can see that the door is hinged here. And it is folding at the bottom here, so when they fold, this area here slides down and aligns with the bottom of the door right there. Here we have a sliding door.

You can see that typically what is happening is that we are showing the door. Nowadays, sliding doors are typically purchased as an assembly that has a frame that extends from here to here. It has thin walls assembled here and it has the track that goes over the door.

Again, so here is a sliding door, it is an assembly, you can see that it slides to the left and right. Here is what they call a pocket door, so we can see the door here, we see the direction line. What you will see in some cases, is an arch, you can see the wall here, the wall here.

And then this is a dashed line that shows the line of the arch or opening that is above. In this last row there are different ways and levels of detail for representing windows. So imagine that you are in a room and you are standing right here.

Well, this is the lower edge of the wood sill that is at the bottom of the window. Here in the middle is the glass and here outside is the edge of the window on the outside of the building. If there was a brick, then the brick that is outside in this area would be shown.

Returning to the example, if you are standing here and right here in the middle is the glass, this is the lower part of the window inside and the lower part of the window outside. This is a casement window and in this example it is a casement window that opens inward. You can see that it is showing more details, including the frame, also called jamb, on this left side and the frame on the right.

So that's the detail of the wood. And then you can see here that they are showing a mullion that is an element between the two. And then they are also showing here the interior of the frame of the window, the exterior of the frame of the window.

And then the glazing in the window when it is closed. And then here, a double-hung window, where again, we are showing the complete assembly. With less frequency you see a window represented in this way than in this other.

The reason is that the more detail is shown in something like a window frame or a double-hung window, the more expectations are raised that the research has been done and that they are not just lines, but that they mean something in particular, and therefore, people use this type of representation more commonly; thus, they will typically use a window symbol. The symbol of the window, you know, the hexagon containing a number or a letter, which then goes in the Window Schedule, in which the manufacturer is named and the specific window so that this level of detail in the floor plan does not have to be shown.