Doors that stick every rainy season: swollen timber, sagging hinges and lasting fixes

If your doors start sticking the moment the rain sets in, here is the short version: half the time the door has not swollen at all — the hinges have sagged or the latch has shifted, and ten minutes with a screwdriver fixes it. When it genuinely is swelling, the cause is nearly always the same: the top and bottom edges of the door were never sealed, so the bare timber drinks moisture out of the humid air every monsoon. Plane off the tight spot without sealing those edges and the same door will jam again next November.

First, prove it is actually swollen

Before anyone reaches for a plane, run these three checks in order — the first two cost nothing:

1. Lift the handle while the door is ajar. If the door visibly rises when you lift it, the hinge screws have worked loose and the door is hanging low, scraping at the top corner of the lock side. Tighten the screws. If a screw just spins, the hole is stripped — the trade fix is to swap one screw per hinge for a longer one that bites into the solid frame behind, not to keep turning the old one.
2. Find the exact tight spot with chalk. Rub chalk (or an old lipstick) along the edge of the frame, close the door once, and open it. The colour transfers onto the door precisely where it binds. We do this on every sticking-door call, because guessing means shaving wood that was never the problem.
3. Notice if it only fights you at the latch. A door that swings freely and resists only in the last few centimetres is not swollen — the latch is missing the strike plate, usually because the house has settled. Moving the plate a few millimetres cures that “swelling” completely.

Why the same doors swell every rainy season

Factory finishers and most painters coat the two faces and the lock-side edge — the parts you can see. The top edge, the bottom edge and often the hinge edge are left as raw timber. End grain soaks up moisture many times faster than the face of a board, which is why doors swell from the bottom corner first. In a Serdang or Kajang terrace, the bathroom door, the back-kitchen door and the one nearest the car porch suffer most: steam on one side, rain-splash humidity on the other, and a bare bottom edge sitting millimetres above a damp floor for weeks on end.

Planing it properly, so you only do it once

• Plane while the door is at its most swollen, and remove the minimum — 1 to 2 mm at the chalk-marked spot is nearly always enough. Take off more and you will have a rattling, draughty gap by the dry season.
• Lift the door off its hinges and work on trestles. Planing a hung door in place is how edges end up wavy.
• Seal every freshly planed surface the same day — primer plus two coats, and while the door is down, coat the entire top and bottom edge too. Bare timber left overnight in monsoon humidity has already started drinking again. This sealing step, not the planing, is what stops the problem returning.

When timber is simply the wrong door for that frame

A bathroom or wet-kitchen door that has swollen, been planed, and swollen again is telling you the location has beaten the material. For permanently damp doorways we usually suggest changing material instead of fighting the timber:

One honest note: a sticking door is a classic half-day bundle job. If one door is binding, walk the house — there are usually two or three more, plus a sagging gate hinge, that can share the same visit. Our services page lists what we bundle, and the price guide shows the ranges before you commit to anything.