![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/6439bc9f85efa0ded351bbcde853e8431b-big-door-2.rhorizontal.w700.png\")
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\n Mary, from Selling Sunset, walks through a door made for a giant.
\n Photo: Netflix\n <\/p>\n
The people who own Erewhon have a house that looks like you might expect. There are leather walls, for example. A bathroom that\u2019s all silver-wave marble and a travertine-clad kitchen with a fridge stocked with Hailey Bieber smoothies (sorry \u2014 smoothies with the \u201cspirit of Hailey<\/a>\u201d). And yet its most astonishing feature is somehow the front door: almost comically large, two stories tall. \u201cThis is maybe the most insane door I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d says Alanna, one of the Oppenheim Group brokers touring the house during the most recent season of Selling Sunset.<\/a> She is dwarfed by the frame, which is more than double her height. It\u2019s the first time in nine seasons any of the brokers have said something remotely relatable.<\/p>\n An oversize front door has long been a staple of luxury real estate in Greater Los Angeles, but the Erewhon door was in its own class \u2014 a door for a giant who lives at the top of a beanstalk. \u201cEverybody, even if they liked the house or didn\u2019t like the house \u2014 they loved that door,\u201d Kevin Booker, the Carolwood Estates broker who handled the listing for the sellers, said. The house ultimately sold<\/a> for $28.5 million \u2014 $6 million more than the owners had paid a year before. Was it the door? (Booker estimates it\u2019s in the top-five biggest residential doors in the city.) The Erewhon door\u2019s gigantism definitely places it on the far end of the bell curve, but it\u2019s also not alone. Browse high-end listings in Sherman Oaks<\/a> or the Hollywood Hills<\/a> and you\u2019ll start to notice a pattern: The big doors have gotten bigger.<\/p>\n \n A door for a listing that broker Brent Watson sold in Beverly Hills. \n The \u201cmagnificent 20-foot door\u201d featured in the listing for Michael B. Jordan\u2019s house. \n A big door that is now a \u201cnormal\u201d-size door in Los Angeles. The standard height for an off-the-shelf front door is six feet and eight inches \u2014\u00a0pitiful, really. An eight-bedroom, ten-and-a-half bath that Michael B. Jordan<\/a> put on the market<\/a> back in 2023 boasted \u201ca magnificent 20 foot door.\u201d Meanwhile, a six-bedroom in Encino currently going<\/a> for $9.7 million has an 11-foot bleached-wood behemoth. (Even the pocket doors are \u201coversize,\u201d per the listing.) Even when the exact size of the doors isn\u2019t specified, they all look undeniably<\/a> huge<\/a>. Los Angeles used to be a place of many kinds of doors \u2014 double-doors on a Georgian mansion in Beverly Hills, a rustic little wood number in the Normandy-style homes of Montecito. But today\u2019s ultramodern boxes with 20-foot ceilings have engendered a kind of Big Door Singularity. As Marc Noah, a Sotheby\u2019s broker, put it, \u201cIf you had a double door in 2025, people would look at you funny, unless my mother or grandmother bought the house.\u201d<\/p>\n A large door is a large feat of engineering. George Topalian, founder of West Coast Architectural, a luxury door and window manufacturer, says that a door that is 12 feet tall can weigh up to 1,500 pounds and still use standard hardware. Anything beyond that, though, requires custom hardware. Topalian has made doors up to 24 feet tall that require their own steel or aluminum substructure. \u201cIt\u2019s a little ridiculous to have a door that tall, but we\u2019re in the custom field,\u201d says Topalian. \u201cIf they can afford it, we can build it.\u201d The challenge is the weight, door-makers say: making sure that all that poundage is evenly distributed and that the door doesn\u2019t end up leaning over time. \u201cWe take pivot doors that are 16 to 18 feet tall to shows, and people are like, \u2018Wow that\u2019s big,\u2019\u201d says John Barnes, the vice-president of sales and marketing at Panda Windows & Doors. \u201cAnd we\u2019re like, \u2018It\u2019s kind of small.\u2019\u201d His clients keep asking for bigger and bigger doors, he says. The biggest the manufacturer has made so far is 25 feet tall. Costs start around $25,000 but can run up to $100,000.<\/p>\n The logic here is obvious, even if the scale seems out of hand: The front door is the first thing anyone sees, and having a gigantic one sets a certain tone. Brent Watson, a broker with Beverly Hills Estates who has also noticed the big-door embiggening, agrees: \u201cI think your entrance is always your first point of reference,\u201d he says. At this price point, if a client doesn\u2019t immediately like the look of the house, it\u2019s basically a \u201cnonstarter.\u201d Another reason the doors are getting larger? \u201cPeople with big egos want to have a big presence,\u201d he tells me.<\/p>\n I asked brokers whether the people who buy these big-door houses actually use them. (It\u2019s kind of preposterous to imagine heaving open a 20-foot-door every time you want to get the mail.)\u00a0Some of them claimed that they do. \u201cIt was used all the time,\u201d Booker said of the Erewhon door. \u201cIt was very easy to open.\u201d Watson of Beverly Hills Estates, though, acknowledged that big front doors are often for show \u2014 a formal entrance for when you aim to impress. As for coming in from a morning at Tracy Anderson? \u201cThey\u2019ve got their mud-room entrance, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1816ca23cabacd3315ee50d2030a47ae90-049-1161-shadow-hill-49-279.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Christopher Amitrano\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4178d45979eff0bfb8c2e4b97d3dde019c-image-l-01-5.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Chernov Team\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/af62d0ff3e86185d18039351409a1eaefe-HRES-54.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Lawrence Fitz Simons\n <\/p>\n