Internal doors for Malta, made to your opening

Finishing from shell form: doors come last, decided first

Most Maltese apartments change hands in shell form, and the buyer commissions the finishes. That sequence has one trap built into it: doors are among the last items installed, so they are usually among the last ordered — and by then the wall thicknesses, the floor build-up and the plaster are already fixed facts rather than drawings.

Made-to-measure doors take six to eight weeks in production if they are lacquered, less for laminate. Add a week or two for shipping. If the handover date matters, the door schedule is a January decision, not a March one.

The practical consequence: send us the schedule while the walls are still being built. We can quote from approximate sizes and confirm on final measurements later, which is how most of our Maltese projects run.

Maltese walls: thickness is the whole problem

Franka and globigerina limestone walls, hollow concrete block, and in the old cores of Valletta, Birgu or Victoria walls that are 50 cm and more. Catalogue doors come with a frame sized for a standard partition. On a Maltese wall that frame is simply too narrow, and the gap gets covered with an architrave that sits proud — visible for the life of the building.

We make the frame to the real thickness of your wall, measured opening by opening. For walls above 30 cm we use extended or multi-part frames; for renovations where the final thickness is only known once the old finish comes off, we use a telescopic frame that absorbs a few centimetres of difference on site.

The leaf itself is a laminated solid wood perimeter frame with a honeycomb core and two pressed facings. That construction stays flat, which matters in a climate that runs humid for most of the year and then gets dried out by air conditioning for four months.

Apartments, hotels and short lets

A large share of what we ship to Malta goes into property that is let, and the advice for those projects is short and unglamorous:

• Laminate rather than lacquer. Suitcase wheels, daily cleaning and guests who close doors with a foot. Laminate takes it; lacquer chips.
• One model throughout. Same leaf, same handle, same size wherever the layout allows. Replacing one damaged leaf then becomes a five-minute order rather than a hunt for a match.
• One spare leaf in storage. It costs less than a blocked week in August.
• Avoid high gloss. In strong Mediterranean light every mark shows. Matt and satin stay presentable far longer for the same cleaning effort.

For blocks of apartments and hotels we also supply fire rated doors with the accompanying documentation, and acoustic doors with a solid core for rooms off a corridor.

Getting the doors to Malta

Malta is in the European Union and the eurozone, so there is no customs clearance and no duty: the goods travel as they would inside Italy, and you are invoiced in euro. For companies with a valid Maltese VAT number we invoice without VAT under the reverse charge.

The only real difference from a mainland delivery is the sea leg. Doors travel by road to Sicily and then by ferry, or as groupage from a mainland port. In practice that means roughly one to two weeks from loading, depending on the sailing. We confirm the window when we confirm the order, not after.

Doors arrive labelled room by room, with hardware and fitting instructions. Installation is done by your own joiner or contractor — we provide the measuring sheet, the hardware and technical support by phone or video call during fitting.

Frequently asked questions

Doors for a project in Malta?

Send the door schedule or the drawings: we reply with a written quotation, normally within 24 working hours, in English or Italian.