Interior doors from China: matching doors, wall panels and cabinets across a whole floor

Chinese custom-joinery factories make interior doors, frames and wall panels in the same boards and finishes as their cabinets, so gaps, heights and colours can line up across a whole floor. Specify each opening from site measurements, including wall thickness, the leaf construction, the gaps, the hinge and lock preparation for your local hardware, and the finish. Confirm with local building control whether any door must be fire-rated, and with your broker how doors and panels are classified.

What interior doors and wall panels can you buy from China?

Flush concealed doors, framed and panelled doors, double doors, wood-veneer and melamine wall panels, slatted panels — usually made by the same factory that builds the wardrobes and kitchen. Chinese homeowners call this “door, wall and cabinet as one”: door, panelling and built-ins drawn and made together in one board and colour. The posts in this research show flush floor-to-ceiling doors hidden in panelling, a walnut-veneer wall with a concealed door, and a carved French-style double door painted to match its panelling.

That is why doors and panels belong in the same conversation as cabinets. Our kitchen cabinets from China guide covers the shared process, and our doors and wall panels page what we source.

How do you make doors, panels and cabinets line up across a floor?

Fix one set of reveal gaps, one top line and one skirting detail, and make every door and panel drawing obey them. A Guangdong homeowner made four corridor doors into full-height concealed doors and published the detail drawing. The principle: the leaf continues the panels’ lines, so the shadow gap at the top and the recessed skirting at the bottom run straight through the door.

• Gap between leaf and frame: 3 mm.
• Top of the leaf: 10 mm reveal, matching the panels.
• Bottom: 20 mm, matching the panel’s recessed skirting, with the door’s own inset skirting trimmed to suit the floor finish.
• Frame: 160 mm, with a 50 mm inner lining offset at the corner.

Those numbers only work if the walls and openings are measured precisely and the floor finish is known. Our guide to measuring for cabinets and joinery from China covers how to record openings, wall thickness and finished floor levels.

What should an interior door specification from China include?

Opening size, wall thickness, leaf construction and weight, gaps, hinges, lock preparation and finish — per door. The Guangdong doors are three 18 mm boards laminated together, with the centre hollowed out — his answer when commenters worried that a 54 mm leaf would be heavy enough to sag. Constructions range from engineered solid-core leaves to solid-wood composite with carved panels, as on the Heilongjiang double door; ask for weight and core as well as face.

Hardware is where imported doors most often go wrong. A Chinese factory will prepare a door for whatever lock it normally supplies unless told otherwise. Tell the factory exactly which lockset, latch, hinges and stops you will fit, send the manufacturer’s templates, and decide whether hardware ships with the doors or is bought locally. The Guangdong owner kept a handle and skipped automatic closers for practical reasons — a design choice to settle before drawings.

What does the comment section add?

The 372 comments under the concealed-door post test the design from several angles.

• Is it really invisible? One commenter argued that a door with a handle and no automatic closer is not a true concealed door; the author agreed it is better described as a minimalist door.
• Weight and sag. Readers worried that three 18 mm boards would be too heavy and drop over time; the author replied that the core is hollowed out.
• Local factories stay local. Asked for a maker, the author named a local custom factory in his city and added that it does not serve other cities — common for Chinese joinery firms.

Wood veneer or melamine wall panels?

Melamine-faced board is cheaper, consistent and matches cabinet doors exactly; lacquered real-wood veneer looks richer but varies panel to panel. A Zhejiang wall-panel maker’s post compares the two and shows the details that make panelling look finished: 2 mm reveal gaps between panels, a small stepped “begonia” corner detail on external corners instead of a sharp butt joint, and clean transitions where panels meet sintered stone or slatted sections. Ask for a large finish sample, not a chip, before approving a whole wall.

Panels are wood-based board like any cabinet, so the emissions and board questions in cabinet board materials apply to them too.

What rules apply to Chinese interior doors abroad?

Fire rating, accessibility and classification — none of which a domestic Chinese door is designed for by default. Some doors in homes, and many in apartments, hotels and commercial buildings, must be fire-rated or self-closing under local rules, and Chinese domestic doors are generally not certified to overseas fire standards. Ask your architect or building control which openings are affected, and source those from certified suppliers.

For customs, wooden doors and frames are generally treated as builders’ joinery under heading 4418 rather than as furniture in Chapter 94; wall panels may fall under other wood headings depending on construction. Confirm the lines with your broker — our Chapter 94 guide explains why the boundary matters. Doors need crated or edge-protected export packing.

Should doors come from the same factory as the cabinets?

If colour and line matching across the floor matter to you, yes — that is the point of the “door, wall and cabinet” system. The Heilongjiang owner’s double door was made by the same local factory as all her woodwork, and the painted door matches the wall exactly. A door specialist may engineer doors better, so we compare both; our explainer on whole-house customisation in China shows how one design system is run across kitchen, wardrobes, doors and panels.

How Source Foshan handles it