Doors do not need much, they just need the right little
A hardwood door installed properly and finished on all six faces should look good in twenty years with almost no attention. What ruins them is not neglect so much as enthusiasm: the wrong cleaner, a pressure washer, or a coat of the wrong product over a finish that was working fine.
Habit one: dust dry, wipe damp, never wet
Once a fortnight, run a dry microfibre cloth over the faces and along the top edge. Once a month, wipe with a cloth wrung out in plain water, then dry it immediately. That is the entire cleaning routine for an interior door. Skip the multi-surface spray - most contain a solvent or an ammonia compound that slowly hazes a PU finish and strips a wax oil outright.
Habit two: watch the bottom rail on external doors
The bottom 150mm of an external door does most of the suffering: splashback from the porch floor, standing water after a squall, and grit that sits in the gap between leaf and threshold. Sweep that gap out and check the finish there twice a year. A finish that has gone dull or chalky at the bottom rail is a warning, and re-coating that band takes an hour. Leaving it means the whole leaf comes off for stripping in two years.
Habit three: refresh an oil finish before it looks tired
An oiled door in a covered position wants a fresh coat roughly every eighteen months; fully exposed, closer to once a year. Clean the surface, let it dry properly, and wipe on a thin coat of the same penetrating oil with a lint-free cloth, working with the grain. Wipe off everything that has not soaked in after fifteen minutes - the failure mode with oil is always leaving too much on, which stays tacky and collects dust.
You do not sand between coats and you do not strip anything. That is the advantage of oil over a film finish: maintenance is a wipe, not a project.
Habit four: tighten the hardware once a year
Hinge screws work loose, and a door hanging on three tight screws and one loose one drops just enough to catch on the strike. Take five minutes a year with a screwdriver. If a screw spins without biting, remove it, glue a hardwood dowel into the hole, let it set, and re-drill. Do not go up a screw size, which splits the jamb.
The mistake worth naming
Pressure washing an external timber door. The jet forces water into the end grain and past the finish at every joint, and it raises the grain so the surface never feels right again. It looks clean for a week and costs a refinish. Bucket, soft brush, plain water.
What we will do if something goes wrong
Every door we make is covered for two years against defects in materials and workmanship, and we would far rather look at a problem early than hear about it after somebody has attacked it with a sander. Send a photograph of the affected area and the whole leaf, tell us roughly when it started, and we will tell you honestly whether it is a warranty item, a maintenance item or a site issue.
