Door and hardware
No survey separates door and hardware on its own, so this page shows Interiors's figures as the nearest comparable trade, labelled as derived, and lists 5 mechanisms that cost door and hardware contractors money and the step that fixes each.
No survey separates door and hardware, and it isn't one of the 48 trades in the SPM reference. The figures on this page are Interiors's, the nearest comparable trade that's in it, and every table and export labels them as derived. They describe a trade that works like this one, not door and hardware itself. Use them to find the neighbourhood, then let your own job costing be the answer.
Door and hardware by revenue band
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M | $25M–$50MModeled | $50M–$100MModeled | $100M–$500MModeled | $500M+Modeled | CFOS target at $1M–$5M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 13% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 9% | 8% | 8% | 12% |
| Gross margin | 19% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 25% | 26% | 28% | 22% |
| Net profit | 6% | 9% | 11% | 13% | 16% | 18% | 20% | 10% |
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 12% | 11% | 10% |
| Gross margin | 22% | 23.5% | 24.5% |
| Net profit | 10% | 12.5% | 14.5% |
Modeled extension of the survey curve, not reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. That applies to the 4 bands above $10M to $25M, and no CFOS target is published for them.
Gross margin and overhead come from CFMA, Jones Maresca and SPM's own trade data, because those are the figures those sources report by trade and size. Net profit is calculated from them as gross margin minus overhead, so the three rows tie. That makes it an operating profit figure: what is left before interest, other income and expense, and the tax planning choices owners make, such as bonuses, depreciation methods and retirement contributions.
Surveys report net income before taxes after those items, so a reported net can run below the figure here. At the typical contractor the difference is small: CFMA's 2025 medians are 7.1 percent before interest and taxes and 6.7 percent net income before taxes. It grows with size. Against the separate measured net profit dataset, the calculated net runs 0.8 points higher at $1M to $5M, 2.2 points at $5M to $10M and 3.5 points at $10M to $25M, because the gross margin and overhead rows change faster with size than reported net profit does.
Above the $10M to $25M band the gross margin and overhead rows are a modeled extension of the same curves. They have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker, and the calculated net there runs well above survey medians, so read those bands as a model and not as a survey result.
Run On CFOS. Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference: Door and hardware. 2026. Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC. https://runoncfos.com/trades/door-hardware. CC BY 4.0.
Figures on this page were last revised 2026-08-21. Published under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse of any figure here, including commercially, as long as the credit above travels with it. The same figures in machine-readable form: /benchmarks.json.
Trade level gross margin and overhead come from figures CFMA, Jones Maresca and other sources publish, and Run On CFOS derives net profit as gross margin minus overhead. The CFOS targets beside them are from the book CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System, published with the full reference at runoncfos.com.
- 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2024.
- 2025 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2025.
- 2025 Performance Benchmarks, Construction Companies, Jones Maresca and Company, 2025.
- Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference, Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC, 2026.
Sourcing and method: the methodology page.
Which bands are measured. The 4 bands above $10M–$25M extend the survey curve further out and have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. How every figure was built is explained on the methodology page.
5 problems specific to door and hardware
Welded hollow metal gets set during wall framing and takes the longest to buy of anything on your list. Nothing releases to the factory until the hardware schedule submittal comes back and the keying conference happens. Your material has no spot price. Frames go in at framing, doors hang after paint, and hardware goes on at punch.
Each one below points at the item, the unit, the clock, or the party that makes it a door and hardware problem, and it says which step fixes it.
| Mechanism | Why it's specific to this trade | Step |
|---|---|---|
| Your first frame is also your longest lead item | Frames are the first thing the building needs from you and the longest thing you can buy, at the same time. No other finish trade mobilises during wall framing, and no other finish trade has a first-trip item that must be released to a factory a quarter ahead. Miss the window and the GC frames the wall without you, which turns a welded frame into a knock-down retrofit and a return trip that was never priced. | Job cost structure |
| Two approval clocks come between you and the factory | Both clocks belong to the design team and the owner, and neither starts the day you get the contract. A finish trade that buys stock material never needs an architect's stamp plus an owner's keying decision before anything can ship. Five weeks with the architect and an unscheduled keying conference compress your buyout window to whatever is left, while the price you signed keeps aging. | Project management |
| Manufacturer list letters reprice your bid three times | Copper has a public number a wire puller can watch and hedge against. Your cost moves when a manufacturer mails a letter, on their schedule, with a short window before the new list takes effect. Escalation language on a hard-bid finish package is almost never granted, so every dollar of movement between quote date and purchase order date is on you. | Estimating system |
| One install line in the bid becomes three trips | The building's own sequence splits your scope, and no amount of scheduling collapses it back together. Holes drilled through frames for somebody else's anchors, paint on strikes, bent hinge preps, and clearances thrown off by a new floor build-up all turn up on your last trip. A trade that installs and leaves never inherits three months of other people's traffic on its own material. | Project management |
| Your job cost hides which opening groups lost money | The unit you sell and the unit you buy are two different objects, and the spread between them is wider here than in any other finish scope. A board sub buys sheets and sells square footage, and those two reconcile on their own. A per-opening estimate against SKU-level POs on mixed multipliers only reconciles if the cost codes are built to hold opening groups. | Job cost structure |
Other interiors and finishes trades
What owners ask
What gross margin should a door and hardware contractor run?
No survey reports door and hardware on its own, so there's no figure of its own to give you. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Interiors, which runs 19% gross margin at $1M–$5M. That's the number this page shows, labelled as derived. Treat it as the neighbourhood, because door and hardware can run above or below it.
Where do the figures on this page come from?
From Interiors. In the surveys door and hardware rolls into 238350 Finish Carpentry, which mixes it with several other trades, so the reference pairs it with the nearest trade it does measure. Gross margin and overhead are that trade's, and net profit is calculated as gross margin minus overhead, so the three tie out. Every table and every export says "Derived from the nearest comparable trade."
What costs a door and hardware contractor the most money?
Your first frame is also your longest lead item. Welded hollow metal gets set during wall framing and takes the longest to buy of anything on your list. The money leaves months before there's a pay application to put it on. That's one of 5 on this page, and 2 of the 5 resolve to step 01, job cost structure.
Which steps does door and hardware keep pointing to?
step 01 job cost structure on 2 of them, step 06 project management on 2 of them, step 04 estimating system on 1 of them. That distribution is the install order for this trade, because the step with the most mechanisms is the one holding the most money.
What should a door and hardware contractor use instead?
Work the mechanisms on this page first, since they're specific and actionable. For a rough sense of the economics, read the interiors and finishes group, which is the nearest published context. Your own job costing beats any industry average once step 01 is installed.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, and CONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for door and hardware contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.