At Alara-Lukagro, we work with doors every day. Determining the rotation direction of a door is therefore a daily routine for us. But in conversations with our customers, we notice that it is not that easy for everyone, especially if you do not deal with doors on a daily basis.

What is rotation direction actually?

The rotation direction of a door actually says nothing more than which side of the door the hinge is on. It is important that you look from the side of the door where you see the hinges. That is always from the side where the door turns towards you.

However, not all countries have the same rules for indicating the rotation direction. At Alara-Lukagro we always use the naming in accordance with the German DIN standard. According to the DIN standard, a left handed door has the hinge on the left and a right handed door has the hinge on the right.

However, the Dutch NEN standard is the exact opposite of the DIN standard. The Dutch standard does not actually specify the position of the hinge but the position of the lock. What is a left handed door according to the DIN standard, is therefore a right handed door (and left-closing) according to the NEN standard.

Inward or outward rotating doors

For the choice of hinges only the swing direction is important, for the choice of locks it is also important whether it is an inward or outward opening door. The combination of the rotation direction and the opening direction is given by a letter and a number.

• L1: DIN left inward rotation
• L2: DIN right outward rotation
• L3: DIN left outward rotation
• L4: DIN right inward rotation

Rotation direction for double-leaf doors

For a double-leaf door, we specify the swing rotation of the active door leaf. The active door leaf is the one that is actually used to enter or exit a room, the passive door leaf is locked during normal use. When the active door leaf is a left handed door, we call it left-active.