Door Installation in Houston: Front, Patio and Garage Door Costs, With the Lock, Wind and Permit Rules That Come With Them

What door installation costs in Houston

These prices come from national installed costs multiplied by 0.82, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' construction cost factor for Texas. A door job that would run $2,000 at the national average lands near $1,640 here.

Estimates for 2026, including labor and standard parts. Houston prices use the Texas statewide construction cost factor of 0.82 (US average = 1.00) from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Area Cost Factors, which have no separate Houston entry. Your quote depends on access, materials and the condition of the home.

The entry door row is a standard pre-hung door set in an existing opening, and the typical Houston price is about $1,300 for fiberglass. Our cost estimator's material factors move that to roughly $1,100 for steel and $1,750 for solid wood. A door that is all glass adds about 20%, to around $1,550, and smart-lock hardware about 15%. Widening the opening costs the most: the cost estimator's wide-opening factor takes the typical door to about $2,100 before any framing changes.

Angi's Houston data covers the cheaper end of the market too. It puts the average door installation at $706, most projects between $360 and $1,069, and an exterior door at $550 to $2,000. A new frame and jamb adds $200 to $650, and hauling the old exterior door away adds $70 to $200, with Houston labor at $40 to $90 an hour (Angi).

A repair can be enough. Angi's average for a Houston door repair is $295, in a range of $166 to $441 (Angi), and a garage door repair averages about $279, with most between $180 and $390 (Angi). Worn weatherstripping or a loose hinge can usually be fixed. Rot in the frame, or a door that still won't latch after the hinges are adjusted, points to a new unit.

Run your own numbers in the cost estimator below or the full door cost estimator. National prices and a side-by-side of door types are in our door installation cost guide.

Door types and Houston prices

Material comes next. HomeGuide describes steel doors as durable, highly secure and weather resistant but liable to rust without upkeep; fiberglass as durable, impact resistant, insulating and low maintenance; and wood as high maintenance and susceptible to moisture damage (HomeGuide). With 51.84 inches of rain a year at Bush Intercontinental (NOAA NCEI), a door that faces the weather is easier to keep up in steel or fiberglass. Our guides to entry doors, patio doors, French doors, multi-slide doors and garage doors compare the products.

A new front door or garage door is one of the few projects that returns more than it costs at sale. The 2025 Cost vs. Value report priced a steel entry door replacement at $2,400 in Houston, with $5,272 added to resale value, or 219.7% of the cost. A new 16 by 7 foot insulated steel garage door cost $4,607 and added $11,307, a 245.5% return (Cost vs. Value, Houston).

Garage doors in hurricane country

Wind

FEMA calls garage doors one of the largest openings in a building and says wind can blow them in, pull them out or twist them off their tracks. Its hurricane mitigation handbook recommends that any replacement door be rated for the wind speed and wind pressure where the building stands (FEMA P-2181).

Houston's residential code turns that advice into rules. A garage door has to be tested to ASTM E330 or ANSI/DASMA 108 and carry a permanent manufacturer's label with the model, the positive and negative design wind pressure, the installation drawing number and the test standard (Houston IRC R609.4). The City looks up the design wind speed for each address with the ASCE 7 hazard tool, and where a home falls in a windborne debris region, any glass in the garage door has to meet an approved impact standard or ANSI/DASMA 115 (R301.2.1.2). Before you sign, ask the installer to set the label rating of the quoted door next to the design pressure for your house.

Water

Hurricane Harvey flooded an estimated 154,170 homes in Harris County in 2017 (HCFCD). An attached garage built below the base flood elevation in a mapped flood zone needs flood openings, and under FEMA's rules a garage door never counts as one, gaps included. Openings can be built into the door itself, but FEMA warns that a later owner may swap that door for one without them (FEMA Technical Bulletin 1). If your flood vents are in the door panels, order the new door with matching engineered openings.

Power

At the peak of Hurricane Beryl, about 2.7 million people in Harris County had no power, and more than a million were still without it four days later (National Weather Service). Have the installer show you how the opener's manual release works. Federal rules require automatic openers to meet entrapment protection standards so the door stops and reverses (Federal Register, 16 CFR 1211), so ask for the reversing test and a check of the photo eyes before the crew leaves.

The door into the house

Houston's code bans any opening from a garage straight into a bedroom. The door between the garage and the living space has to be solid wood, or solid or honeycomb-core steel, at least 1 3/8 inches thick, or a 20-minute fire-rated door, and it must latch by itself with a self-closing or automatic-closing device (Houston IRC R302.5.1). A hollow-core interior door does not qualify. The City's repair form lists the door into an attached garage as permitted work, so this door belongs on the permit too.

In The Woodlands, a garage door must be wood, fiberglass or metal and painted to suit the approved colors of the house. Changing its material or color takes an application, while a door that matches the old one in color, material and style is pre-approved (The Woodlands standards).

Locks Texas requires on rental doors

Just 42.1% of homes in the City of Houston are owner-occupied, so many door jobs happen on rentals (Census Reporter). Texas law lists the security devices a landlord must install, at the landlord's expense, while a tenant lives in the home (Texas Property Code 92.153):

When a rental door is replaced, the new hardware has to meet these specs. A dead bolt or keyless bolting device installed since September 1, 1993 must sit between 36 and 48 inches above the floor, with a bolt throw of at least 1 inch and a strike plate screwed into the doorjamb (92.154). The law treats the door between the house and the garage as an exterior door, and a door viewer can be a peephole with at least a 160-degree view or a clear glass pane. Chain latches and surface-mounted slide bolts don't count as keyless bolting devices (92.151). Keyed locks also have to be rekeyed within 7 days after each tenant turnover (92.156). Order the replacement door bored and prepped for that hardware so nothing has to be added afterward.

Safety glass, exit doors and thresholds

Houston's code treats glass in any swinging, sliding or bifold door as a hazardous location, so it has to be tempered or laminated safety glass. The exceptions are openings too small for a 3-inch ball and decorative glass. A panel beside a door needs safety glass too when it starts less than 60 inches off the floor and sits within 24 inches of the door, which takes in most sidelights (Houston IRC R308.4).

The main exit door has its own minimums. Every home needs at least one side-hinged egress door with a clear width of 32 inches or more and a clear height of 78 inches or more, and it has to open from inside without a key or special knowledge (R311.2). That rules out a lock on that door that needs a key from the inside. The floor or landing at that door can be no more than 1 1/2 inches below the top of the threshold, or up to 7 3/4 inches on the outside if the door does not swing over it (R311.3.1). If a bedroom's only escape opening is a door, it must be side-hinged or sliding (R310.3). Replacing a door does not trigger the smoke alarm retrofit that comes with other permitted work (R314.2.2).

Energy ratings for Houston doors

ENERGY STAR rates swinging doors by how much glass they hold and sliding glass doors by climate zone. Houston is in the Southern zone.

Source: ENERGY STAR Version 7.0. "Half glass" means 900 square inches of glass or less.

The code minimum is looser. For climate zone 2, the City's repair form caps glazed doors and windows at a U-factor of 0.40 and an SHGC of 0.25 (form CE-1059), and the state's 2015 energy code exempts one side-hinged opaque door of up to 24 square feet from the U-factor limit (Texas 2015 IECC guide). Near the airports, wherever a City airport land use permit applies, each exterior door also needs an STC 40 sound rating (Houston code amendments). The federal tax credit for exterior doors is gone for doors placed in service after December 31, 2025 (IRS). Door replacements do qualify for Sugar Land's Great Homes Update Program, which pays back 10% to 50% of exterior project costs up to $10,000; its applications may open again on January 1, 2027 (Sugar Land Great Homes).

Do you need a permit to replace a door in Houston?

You do within Houston city limits. Item 2 on the Residential Repair Spec List, form CE-1059, covers replacing exterior doors and the doors into an attached garage. That form is for like-for-like work with matching or equivalent materials, so a wider opening or a change to the exit path goes through plans and review (CE-1059).

Expect about 10 business days for the repair permit, which stays valid for 6 months and needs an inspection. Fees start with the $33.56 administrative charge and the 2026 minimum permit fee of $91.06, and unpermitted work draws an extra $333.42 or twice the permit fee, whichever is higher (Houston Permitting Center, 2026 fees). For floodplain questions, the City's floodplain office is at 832-394-8854.

In historic districts, the Office of Preservation's list applies: a door visible from the street needs a Certificate of Appropriateness before it is replaced, while storm doors, screen doors and taking off burglar bars are exempt (Houston exemptions list). A 2026 restoration or alteration application costs $152.08 and is due 22 days ahead of the commission's monthly meeting (2026 COA fees).

Suburban cities issue their own permits. Pearland won't let a contractor pull one until the company has registered and filed proof of at least $300,000 in general liability coverage (Pearland contractor rules), and Galveston charges double or triple permit fees for work started without one (Galveston permit FAQ). For door installation in Katy, find out first whether the home is inside the City of Katy or in county jurisdiction. The Woodlands pre-approves storm doors and screens that match the house and bans security bars.

Coastal homes and the TDI windstorm program

Galveston and Brazoria counties, along with the bayfront cities of La Porte, Morgan's Point, Pasadena, Seabrook and Shore Acres east of State Highway 146, sit in the state's designated catastrophe area (TWIA). A home insured for wind through TWIA there usually needs a TDI certificate of compliance for alterations (TDI). TDI exempts two kinds of door work from inspection: a storm door or screen door installed outside an exterior door, and an exterior side-hinged door or glass door replaced without its frame if it covers under 10% of that wall (TDI exemptions). A complete door unit with a new frame gets inspected.

The certificates have followed the 2024 IRC since April 1, 2026, and TDI reports that most of the catastrophe area now falls in the windborne debris region, where glass doors and doors with glass need impact protection (TDI codes). TDI requires doors and garage doors to carry a label with the manufacturer, model and design pressure, plus the missile rating on impact units. A door is tested with the hardware it ships with, and an approval for an inswing door does not extend to the outswing version (TDI FAQ). Product questions go to TDI's windstorm line at 800-248-6032. Our impact windows guide explains the missile tests that glass doors go through.

Lead paint on old door frames

Of the homes in the City of Houston, 47.0% were built before 1980, and in Pasadena the share is 56.7% (Census Reporter, linked above). For a home built before 1978, the EPA's lead renovation rule calls for a certified firm on paid work that disturbs more than 6 square feet of paint in a room or more than 20 square feet outside (EPA RRP). Pulling an old door frame with its casing and trim can cross that line, so ask whether the crew is certified before demolition starts.

Areas we cover

GOLDGCP door installers take jobs throughout greater Houston:

• Houston
• Pasadena and Pearland
• Sugar Land and Katy
• Cypress, The Woodlands and Conroe

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