Why it matters
Doors are the honest witness in a renovated home. A hollow-core door is a cardboard honeycomb between two thin skins. It weighs almost nothing, sounds hollow, blocks no noise, and costs a fraction of a solid-core door. It is the default in Canadian tract housing from the 1960s onward and it is entirely normal. But a hollow-core door standing next to a $15,000 kitchen is a sentence about a budget. Whoever did that renovation did the parts that photograph and skipped the parts that do not, and that is worth knowing before you assume the mechanicals got attention either. Lifespans back this up: InterNACHI puts a hollow-core interior door at 20 to 30 years and a solid-core one at 30 to 100+. Upgrading to solid-core doors is one of the changes people notice most and expect least: the house gets quieter, and it feels heavier and better made, for a per-door price.
How to spot it
Flush, flat, featureless slab doors (1960s to 1980s); hollow six-panel moulded doors (the 1990s and 2000s default, and still hollow inside despite the panels); doors that rattle in the frame; doors that have been trimmed short over new flooring, leaving a large gap at the bottom; and brass or mismatched knobs. Premium tells run the other way: tall doors that reach nearly to the ceiling, solid panelled doors, and consistent hardware throughout.
What it costs
Toronto, 2026: $300 to $850 per door installed, with labour of roughly $150 to $300 of that per door. A whole-house door swap in a three-bedroom home is therefore a real number, usually five figures, which is why it so often gets skipped.
What to do
Monitor. Price it per door on the doors you would actually change. It is a fair, easy, low-conflict negotiation item.
Education and triage, not a home inspection. Casaroo names the door tier it can see. Whether the door swings true is something you can check yourself, in about a second, on the tour.