If you want to know how to fix a door that won’t close, the good news is you don’t need a carpenter — just about an hour and a few basic tools. A door that sticks, drags, or won’t latch properly is one of the most annoying problems in a house because you deal with it multiple times every day.

Figure Out What’s Actually Wrong

Watch the door carefully as you close it. Where is it sticking or rubbing? Mark the spot with a pencil if it helps. A door can fail to close for several reasons: the wood has swollen due to humidity, the hinges have loosened, the frame has shifted, or the strike plate is misaligned. Each has a different fix.

Start With the Hinges

Loose hinge screws are the most common cause of a door that won’t close right, and the easiest to fix. Open the door and tighten every screw on every hinge with a screwdriver. If the screws spin without tightening — meaning the holes are stripped — remove the screw, jam a few wooden toothpicks with wood glue into the hole, let it dry for an hour, then reinstall the screw. The toothpicks give it new material to bite into.

If the Door Is Rubbing at the Top or Bottom

This is usually a swelling issue, especially in humid months. Try closing the door and watching exactly where it catches. If it’s a light rub, a few passes with coarse sandpaper on the rubbing edge might be enough. If it’s significant, you’ll need to plane the door — either with a hand plane or a belt sander. Remove the door from the hinges first by tapping out the hinge pins with a screwdriver and hammer.

If the Latch Isn’t Catching

Look at the strike plate on the door frame — that’s the metal piece with a hole that the latch clicks into. Is the latch hitting it above or below the hole? Close the door slowly and watch. If it’s misaligned by a small amount, you can enlarge the strike plate hole slightly with a metal file. If it’s more misaligned than that, loosen the strike plate screws, shift it until it lines up, then retighten.

If the Door Has Settled and the Frame Is Off

Older homes settle over time, and door frames can shift with the house. If your door has been getting progressively worse over years, the frame itself may have racked slightly out of square. You can sometimes fix this by adjusting the hinges — adding a thin cardboard shim behind one leaf of a hinge to rotate the door in the frame. This takes some trial and error, but it works.

When to Call Someone

If the door frame is visibly warped or the gap around the door is dramatically uneven — more than half an inch in places — that can be a sign of structural settling that goes beyond a simple adjustment. It’s worth having a carpenter or contractor take a look. But for the vast majority of sticking doors, the fixes above will get you there.

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