Doors open or closed?

I read one place that you should shut all the doors in your house to keep the heat in each room. I read somewhere else that you should keep the room doors open so the heat flows from room to room. What do you do? What do you think?

Re: Doors open or closed?

We do a little bit of both. We have a bathroom which is freezing. We have tried everything to get it warmer (changed vents/insulation/etc) We always keep that door shut - it is nowhere near the thermostat so I think keeping the door closed is for the best. Every other door is usually open.

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We do both. Our downstairs has three doors (the front door, back door, and bathroom) and they all stay closed.

Upstairs our bedroom door, office door and bathroom door stay open. The two spare bedrooms are closed (and they are FREEZING!!)- we don't go in the them though. The rooms with open doors are alwyas much warmer.

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At night I shut the 2 doors to the kitchen/dining/living room b/c theres a cathedral ceiling. If I dont shut the doors the heat runs ALLLLL night and in the bedrooms we are hot and dry. Chapped lips, stuffy noses etc. If I shut the doors at night were all good. Im sure it saves money too.

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I leave all the doors inside the house open all the time, except the door to the basement.

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I leave them all open bc the heat works too well in my room, but not as well in my dd's room , so I let it flow.

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During the day, I keep them open. It's a forced air system, so in order for the vents to work properly, it's better for the doors to be open. At night, all the bedroom doors are closed for fire safety, though.

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We close the door to the second floor to keep the cat out. Then every door upstairs is left wide open to even out the temperature. This has actually helped make the bathroom a little warmer.

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DH always closes the door to the spare bedroom for some reason unknown to me, might even just be OC lol. I usually keep it open except at night becuase it creeps me out when I pass it if the door is open.

Seriously though, I have no clue if one way or the other is better for heat.

Message edited 12/17/2011 2:36:12 PM.

Re: Doors open or closed?

The only room in my apartment that gets really cold is my bedroom. It seems that when I close the door it gets even colder in there so I leave it open.

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We keep all of the doors open in our apartment except for our bedroom. Our bedroom seems to get nice and toasty when the door is closed

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during the day our upstairs bedroom doors are closed b/c its so cold up there and the cold air travels down to the living room. I find I need the heat on much less in the living room/downstairs with those doors closed.

Downstairs the door to my office and bathroom are open.

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All our doors are open all the time...bc we don't have children yet. Hahaha

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We have an old school heating system. There is one, yes ONE, vent for the entire house. It is the size of a subway grate and you can't walk on it because it will burn your feet. It produces a lot of heat but all doors must be open since there are no vents or radiators in the rooms, so that one vent heats all the rooms. Pain in butt with a baby and 2 cats but it is what it is.

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I have never given this any thought. My bathroom door in our bedroom is closed at night to keep the sun from shining in the room before we wake up in the morning. Other than that, I don't purposely keep any of the doors closed.

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God Bless Central AC & Heat! hahaha

All doors are normally closed except ours (because of the cats).

Normally we shut the vent off the 3rd room because we don't use it. That goes for AC too but my brother moved in so its open now. The thing is that room gets SOOOO hot so he cracks his door sometimes and always has a fan running.

AJ's room is always shut.

In NY we'd close the doors to keep the heat in the rooms. We had a really open floor plan with our entrance being an interior lower level, with no doors all the way up through our living space. So you'd come in and go up stairs and into our office/living room or even all the way back to our kitchen without doors. Cold would creep. We used long, thick curtains to cut off the entryway and another on the top of the stairs to help with the loss of heat (and in the summer to keep the heat out)

Re: Doors open or closed?

Posted by MrsECullen7319

Posted by GoldenRod

During the day, I keep them open. It's a forced air system, so in order for the vents to work properly, it's better for the doors to be open. At night, all the bedroom doors are closed for fire safety, though.

I didn't know you were supposed to keep them closed for fire safety... Can I ask why it's safer to keep then closed? Id be afraid a fire would start in dcs room and I wouldn't realize as quickly...

Re: Doors open or closed?

it totally depends on your heating system and how your home is zoned, where your thermostats are, etc. each home is different.

Re: Doors open or closed?