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I was looking to get some interior doors installed in my home. What I would have called "French Doors", i.e. two doors the swing open from the middle of the frame.

However, as I was talking to my superior wife, I was informed that French Doors have glass and are not solid. Having studied engineering and architecture in my youth, I was surprised to have such a fundamental misunderstanding of the term...

In fact the faithful Google machine tells me:

French door: a door with glass panes throughout its length.

To corroborate itself, when I do an image search for "French Doors" they all appear to have glass.


So my question is, what is the name for doors that operate in the same style as "French" ones, but do not have glass in them?


Edit for clarity, I am referring to doors that operate like the ones circled below.

door symbols

Or for the more visually inclined; like this, but without the glass panels.

enter image description here

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From http://architecturaltrust.org:

Double Doors

Two adjacent doors that share the same door frame, and between which there is no separating vertical member. Double doors are often referred to as “French doors”, due to their preponderance in French architecture.

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    I've only ever heard them called French when they are glazed. If we do a Google image search for "french door", almost every image in the first few pages of results is of a glazed double doors. Anyway, you nailed the answer: unglazed French doors are just double doors.
    – Kaz
    Commented Aug 3, 2016 at 15:35
  • I agree, in that I've only seen glazed doors referred to as french doors. I just quoted the linked page directly. Even though it didn't talk about glazed or not, I thought leaving it the origin of the term was interesting.
    – Tim B
    Commented Aug 3, 2016 at 18:53
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    Presumably these glazed doors are called French because they invite voyeurs to peep in on romantic activity, which is very blasé.
    – Kaz
    Commented Aug 3, 2016 at 18:57
  • I used to sell millwork for several years with a MIdwest regional building supply and we referred to this as 'double' in almost all cases, even for French doors (double doors with full lites). This is term is used often in literature for Masonite, Stanley, and I never met a sales rep that paused when I used the term.
    – RomaH
    Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 18:15

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