Wooden doors and door frames in Nairobi

Doors are bought one at a time and fitted a dozen at a time, and the whole-house package is where this becomes real work rather than a purchase. A new maisonette handed over with hollow internal doors has eight to fourteen openings, and replacing them all at once costs substantially less per door than doing it one room a year.

What it costs

Mahogany doors run from about KES 22,000 to 26,000 each. Door frames run from about KES 5,250 to 10,250 depending on section and timber. Mahogany stair components, for comparison, start around KES 840 for a step and KES 880 for a riser, which gives you a sense of how the timber is priced by volume.

A whole-house door package of eight to fourteen openings typically lands at KES 200,000 to 600,000 supplied and fitted. Market ranges reviewed September 2026, not quotations.

Solid, flush or panel

Solid hardwood is a single species through the thickness. It is heavy, it takes a lock properly, it can be planed and refitted when a house moves, and it can be refinished repeatedly. It is also the most expensive and the heaviest, which means the frame and hinges have to be specified to match.

Flush doors are a light timber frame with a board skin and a hollow or particle core. They are cheap, light and adequate for internal openings where nothing is expected of them. They cannot be planed more than a few millimetres before you are into the void, and they cannot be repaired.

Panel doors are a middle position: a solid frame with inset panels, so the timber can move across the panel without splitting the door. In an older Muthaiga or Karen house this is usually what was there originally, and it is usually what should go back.

Fitting into an old opening is the actual skill

A new door into a new frame in a square opening is straightforward. Most of our door work is not that.

In houses of any age the opening has moved. The head is not level, the jambs are not parallel, and the floor has settled so the gap at the bottom is different at each side. A door hung square into that opening has a visible taper down one edge. A door scribed to the opening looks right and needs the hinge positions, the lock rebate and the closing edge all adjusted to suit.

That is carpentry rather than installation, and it is the difference between a door that closes with a click and one that has to be pushed.

Frames, architraves and the bits that get forgotten

The frame is structural and the architrave is the trim that covers the junction between frame and wall. Replacing a door without addressing a frame that has moved is how you end up adjusting the same door twice a year.

Ironmongery matters more than people expect. A heavy hardwood door on two light hinges will drop, and a dropped door binds at the top corner. Three hinges on anything solid, and hinges sized to the leaf weight rather than to what came in the box.

External doors

An external door in Nairobi takes sun on one face and shade on the other, which is the worst condition for timber because the two faces move differently. That is managed with the finish rather than the species: both faces sealed, the top and bottom edges sealed too, which is where water actually gets in, and a maintenance expectation stated honestly rather than a claim that it never needs attention.