I recently went away for the weekend to Northumberland. We stayed with some friends in a cottage a few miles from the town of Alnwick. Whilst we were there we visited the Holy Island (also known as Lindisfarne). I am not very familiar with the area, but it is a beautiful relaxed place to visit. Lindisfarne is an interesting place with a handful of shops, a castle and a beach as well as a number of homes and guesthouses. Whilst there we noticed that a number of the properties featured very small doors. I would guess they were about five feet tall, which is probably quite annoying for most of the residents and visitors. This made me wonder how old the properties were and we wondered what was the average height for people back when the houses were built.
Today the average height for men in the UK is 5ft 9in and the average height for women is 5ft 3 1/2. The average heights for men and women have increased considerably over the past 150 years. Back in the 1870s the average height for men was about 5 ft 6in. I guess it would be quite a major building project to alter the height of the doorways throughout a property so I can only imagine that tall people avoid such properties.
At Doorsan the most common height for doors and the majority of our sales is 6ft 6in (78in) or in metric 1981mm, though some styles available are 6ft 8in (80in) metric 2032mm. However if you are looking for a particularly small or large door then we have a range of custom size doors. Given that these custom made doors are manufactured to your specific requirements, you may face a longer lead time when ordering these types of doors.
I wonder whether we will continue to see average heights increase and whether this will have an impact on the sizes of doors that we sell.