Storm Door Installation Cost Calculator

Check the door behind it before you buy one

This is the most important thing on the page and it is in the fine print of warranties rather than on any sales display.

A storm door creates a sealed air gap of an inch or two in front of your entry door. In direct sun that gap behaves like a small greenhouse, and the temperature in it can reach 150 to 180°F — far hotter than the door would ever get on its own.

On a dark-colored fiberglass or steel entry door, that heat can:

• Warp or bow the slab, so it stops closing properly.
• Delaminate a fiberglass skin from its core.
• Blister the finish, and accelerate fading badly.
• Void the entry door's warranty. Most major fiberglass and steel door manufacturers explicitly exclude heat damage where a storm door is fitted over a dark door on a sun-exposed elevation, and some exclude it regardless of color.

So before anything else:

1. Which way does the door face? South and west are the problem exposures. North and east are generally fine.
2. Is there a porch roof or deep overhang shading it for most of the day? That changes the answer.
3. What color is the entry door, and what is it made of? Dark on fiberglass or steel is the risky combination. A light-colored door is much safer, and a genuine wood door is less prone to this specific failure.
4. Read the entry door's warranty, or ask the manufacturer. It takes one phone call.

If you have a dark door facing west with no overhang, do not fit a full-view storm door over it. A ventilating half-view unit, which has a permanent screen rather than a full pane of glass, traps far less heat and is the safer choice. Or skip it.

What a storm door is actually for now

Storm doors are still sold on energy savings, and that argument has mostly expired.

• Over a modern insulated entry door, the saving is small. A current fiberglass or steel door is already R-5 or better with a working weather seal; adding a storm door in front of it might save $20 to $40 a year. It will not pay for itself in any reasonable period.
• Over an old door, it is real. A single-glazed, poorly sealed or genuinely drafty original door is where a storm door still earns its money, and on those it does so quickly.

What it reliably does, on any house:

• Ventilation. A screened door lets you open the house without opening it, which is the reason most storm doors get used at all.
• Protection. It takes the weather, the sun and the knocks instead of the entry door. On an original wood door worth keeping, this is the strongest argument there is.
• A small barrier for pets and toddlers, and somewhere for a delivery to sit out of the rain.

It is not security. A storm door's latch is light, its frame is thin aluminum, and anybody who wants through it will be through it. Do not count it.

The real difference between the three is the panel

They hang identically, in the same hours. What separates them is what happens for the half of the year you do not want the screen:

The full-view panel swap is why storm doors get resented. It means carrying a large pane of glass to the garage every spring, finding somewhere it will not get broken, and carrying it back in October. Plenty of people do it once and then leave the screen in all winter, which defeats the point of having bought a full-view door.

A retractable screen is about $175 more than a full view and removes the chore permanently. On a door you will own for fifteen years it is the easy call. A half view is the cheapest and perfectly sensible on a back door, or where the entry door is dark and sun-exposed and you want the lower panel solid anyway.

It screws into the most weathered wood on the house

A storm door is not framed into the opening. Its hinge rail is screwed to the exterior trim — the brick molding or casing around the entry door — and that trim is the most exposed woodwork on the building.

Go and press it with a screwdriver before anybody quotes, especially the bottom six inches on the hinge side, which is where water sits and where the hinge rail takes the most load. If it sinks in:

• The screws will not hold.
• The door will sag within a season and stop latching.
• The trim has to be replaced first, which is a carpentry job and adds about 20%.

This is the single commonest reason a storm door installation goes wrong, and it is entirely visible in advance.

Two small things that are always worth having

• A wind chain. A short chain between the door and the frame that stops the door opening past a safe angle. Without one, the first serious gust catches the door and tears the hinge rail off the trim — or bends the door. It costs $8 to $15 and cheap installations leave it off.
• Two closers, not one. Most storm doors come with one pneumatic closer. A second, fitted at the bottom, stops the door racking and makes it close evenly. A few dollars, and it noticeably extends the life of the frame.

Also worth confirming: the storm door's hinges go on the same side as the entry door's, so the two swing together. Getting that wrong means standing between two doors that open toward each other.

Measuring, if you are buying your own

Measure the opening — the trim-to-trim dimension the door will sit in — in three places across and three places down, and use the smallest of each. Openings are rarely square and the door has to fit the tightest point.

Standard units cover 32 and 36 inches wide at 80 or 81 inches tall, and most houses built since 1960 take one of those off the shelf. An older house, an arched head, or an opening wider than 36 inches needs a made-to-measure door, which adds about 35% and is most of the distance between the average storm door and the expensive end of the range.

This is the one door worth doing yourself

Said plainly, because it is true here and is not true of the other doors on this site.

A storm door is a self-contained unit that screws to existing trim. There is no rough opening, no sill pan, no flashing, no weather barrier to tie into and nothing structural. The kit is $170 to $450, the job is about two hours, and the tools are a drill, a hacksaw to cut the hinge rail to length, a level and a caulk gun.

Doing it yourself saves roughly $170 to $220 — the labor, the trip and the margin on them. That is a real saving on a $675 job, and the failure modes are forgiving: a door hung slightly off can be adjusted, unlike a mis-set sill pan on an entry door.

Pay somebody if the trim needs replacing first, if the opening is not standard, or if the door is heavy glass and you would rather not handle it on a ladder.

What you are paying for

For one full-view storm door onto sound trim, at $675:

The unit is half the job, which is why the style decision moves the figure more than anything else and why there is little to gain from shopping installers hard. Note also that two doors only brings the per-door figure to $800 from $850 on a retractable — the trip happens once but almost nothing else does, so there is no real batch discount here.

Questions worth asking

• Which way does the entry door face, what color is it, and what is it made of? Before anything else.
• Does fitting a storm door affect my entry door's warranty?
• Half view, full view or retractable? And who is swapping the panel?
• Is the trim sound, particularly the bottom of the hinge side?
• Is a wind chain included?
• One closer or two?
• Are the hinges on the same side as the entry door?
• Is the opening a standard size?
• Is the old storm door taken away?
• Is there a minimum charge for a single door? Many installers have one.