How to Stop Someone From Slamming a Door

Whether you’re at home and you have an angry teenager, or you’re at work and you have an angry customer, slamming doors can be a real nuisance. What’s worse is when your door slams even when no one is trying to slam it - it’s just the way that the door hangs, or the way the wind blows through the house. Not only is the noise disruptive, but the risk of trapped fingers and damaged infrastructure adds to the piling complications, and it's only a matter of time before something, or somebody, gets hurt. 

Aside from encouraging people to get a little therapy for their anger management problems (easy enough for the teenager, but a little harder for the customer), here are five easy tips to get doors to stop slamming in your house, or place of work. They’ll save the structural integrity of your door (which is vital when glass is involved) and they’ll put a stop to the harsh, startling bang of a slamming door.

Use a Doorstop

This may seem like a no-brainer, and it’s definitely the most low-tech solution to slamming doors: get a doorstop. These can be rubber or wood. They can be purchased specially from the home department or they can just be a wedge you’ve cut out of a block of lumber in the workshop.

A doorstop is not going to stop an angry person from slamming the door (though it might make them have to stop and kick the doorstop out of the way before they actually can), but it'll definitely help stop your door just slamming on its own. 

After all, doors slam on their own for a number of reasons, and not everything is easily adaptable. It could be hinges (which we’ll talk about in a second) or it could be that there’s a draft running through the building. Often, when you open the back door the front door will slam shut, or vice versa. Air conditioning turning on can cause a door to slam shut, or opening a window will do the same.

Turning to an old fashioned doorstop - even a brick, rock or a copy of War and Peace will work - is one simple solution to keep your door from slamming.

Check the Hinges

Sometimes the problem with the door is that the hinges aren’t holding the door securely. If hinges are misaligned the door will hang at an angle. If this is the case, the door will not stay in place no matter how many times you open it. 

Maybe you’ve gotten tired of dealing with doorstops and you want to fix the door once and for all. The solution to this is to get out the tools and check to see if the door is straight. Open the door all the way, and hold a level against the edge (where the latch is). If the door is hanging level, then the hinges aren’t your problem, but if the door isn’t level, then you’re going to want to get out the screwdrivers (and maybe even the drill) and make sure that those hinges are tight.

It may simply be a matter of tightening a few screws - wouldn’t that be ideal? It may have been that all those months of suffering through abrasiveness that your door slamming could have been solved in 30 seconds with a screwdriver. But it may be that the screws are worn and you need to get new hinges. 

Replacing the hinges isn’t the big job that you think it might be. You don’t need to take off the entire door. Start with the top hinge and unscrew it. Replace the hinge, check with the level to make sure that it’s plumb, and then screw in the door. Follow the same procedure to the middle hinge, and then down to the bottom. When all of the hinges have been replaced, and you’re sure they’re all correct, you’ll know that your door is ready and you should never have to worry about your door slamming on its own again.

Quiet the Door with Weatherstripping

If you have a door that is going to slam no matter what you do (because of the aforementioned teenagers or angry customers) then you can quiet the slamming of the door with weatherstripping. Applying rubber weatherstripping to the doorframe won’t stop the door from smashing shut, but it will soften the blow, and therefore soften the sound. 

All you need to do to apply the weather stripping is open the door, wash out all of the frames to make sure that there’s no dirt or dust in there, and then apply the self-stick rubber foam weather stripping that you can purchase at any hardware store.

Weather stripping will stop a door from slamming because instead of closing with a big bang it will close with a muffled thud. Much less satisfying, but a whole lot safer. 

Try Self-Stick Felt Pads

An easier trick that doesn’t require as much work is to apply felt pads to the door and its frame. These felt pads are the same kind that you can buy that you place on the bottom of home decor to keep it from scratching the floor. These felt pads, when they rub together (the pads on the door and the pads in the frame) will make the door easier to close with a gentler bump. 

However, self-stick felt pads are definitely not a “be all, end all” ideal solution - the door is still going to slam closed pretty hard - but if you’re looking for a quick and easy access solution to keep a front window from breaking when the door whips shut, felt pads might do the trick.

Install a Door Closer

Finally, if all of those solutions don’t work for you, or if you’ve simply had it with the door slamming and you’re looking for a more permanent and effective solution, then you can install a pneumatic door closer. 

We’ve all seen these: they’re on most exterior doors of businesses. They’re a large box that contains a piston, connected to a hinged metal arm. When the door tries to slam, the metal arm pushes against that piston, and the door simply cannot slam any faster than the air in the piston will allow it to. Even if you push on the door to close it faster, it will move at its own speed.

This may seem like overkill for a teenager’s bedroom (or it may not, depending on the tantrums) but if doors are getting slammed in your business, or your exterior doors are always slamming shut when the wind blows, then a pneumatic door closer is the thing for you. They’re unobtrusive, come in a variety of shapes and colors (most of which are intended to make them the least obvious they can be) and they will guarantee you that the door simply will not slam shut. 

We’ll be honest, door closers are the most-efficient solution on this list, and are bound to help you conquer any door slamming problems.

Conclusion

If you have a persistent door slamming issue, and you really are trying to get someone to stop slamming a door (or trying to get differential air pressure from slamming a door), don’t panic. You have options. 

You can either go as low-tech as you can get by simply placing a doorstop at the foot of the door. Or you can go for something a little more involved and unavoidable. You can try to fix your door by adjusting its hinges, adding weatherstripping or felt pads, or you can even bring out the “big guns” and fix your door slamming problem forever with a door closer. 

The door closer is a guaranteed solution, designed to help you. They’re cheap, easy to install, and will ensure that those doors will never bang shut again.