We mainly use the back door in the laundry room. We use the front door, sliders in the den to let the dogs out sometimes. I’ll let the dogs in and out of the screeened porch door if I see them there.

I live in the city and there is absolutely no way that I would leave the garage door open for anyone to use as an entryway. If it is ever cleaned out enough to get my car in it I will enter that way. I like the extra little security of having storm doors on all of the entryways. I can answer the door. See who/what is there and if need be talk through that door. Stormdoors may not look good but the noise that is made when breaking one could give you the needed time to call the police or hide. My house does not have cameras or speakers although as I age I may have them installed.

Front door for us if we are leaving home. Back sliding doors if we are letting the dogs out or taking care of garbage Etc.

We have a side yard door which our son and nephew use a lot instead. We don't have any neighbors who seemed interested in what we're doing.

I'm a garage 'enterer'. So is DH. I drive up, pressing the button to my auto opener as I pull into the driveway. By the time I'm up to the the garage it's fully open and I drive right in. The door inside the garage opens into my office. I have a mail slot - that drops the mail into a wall mounted wooden box inside my garage. If I'm expecting a package from usps that won't fit in the mail slot, the carrier will usually leave it against the house under the mail slot and I'm still retrieving it by opening my car's garage door.

Several feet away is a doorway to outside front where people can enter my mudroom. Many do. Opposite end of that hallway opens to my patio in back. I do have a very nice slate front entrance. Somehow it's not used very often even though the most attractive way into my house.

Our garage is detached and quite a distance from the house. If coming from the garage, we use the back door which opens directly to the kitchen. Usually we park on the street anyway. We use the front door for most of our coming and going, as do all visitors and delivery people. There is just no ambiguity about it. The only person who has come to the back door is the, eh, "troubled" teen from down the block who comes to ask for paid work. I do not trust him one whit, and do not like him coming through the yard to knock on the back door.

We usually come and go through the garage. I park outside because the garages are too claustrophobic for me. Guests come to the front door. The back door is behind the fence so no visitors there except birds and rabbits.

I live in the country, garage is not attached and quite a distance from the house. I have a front and a back door. Most everyone uses the back door which opens in to the mud room. When there is no snow I do use the front door to go to the mailbox.

Mostly garage. Went out the front door to get the mail today, though. When the weather's nice and I'm working outside in the yard I use both but a lot of times the garage since my garden tools are in there. Dogs go out the backyard thru the sunroom. When I take the garbage out, it's always through the garage because the bins are out by the garage.

Live in a condo. Have one front entrance. Do enjoy the pleasure of two doors, from living room and bedroom, that open to my deck. Love it!

When our house was built, the developers located it on the "wrong" lot in our area. That is, our side door was supposed to face the driveway with easy access to the garage. But instead our side door is on the opposite side of the house from the driveway, facing our narrow side yard and looking onto the neighbor's deck. We hardly ever use this entrance and prefer the front door. We also use the patio door at the back of the house for access to the yard and garbage, etc.

We mostly use a slider that opens directly from the kitchen onto the deck.

When I go out in the car, I exit and enter from the door between the garage and the house. When I go to get the mail, I use the front door. All guests and service people use the front door. Occasionally, the handyman will use the side door if he is working on that side of the house.

Our house was built on a cul d sac lot intended for another model. The lot was too narrow in one dimension for the intended house. so we ended up with a nice over-sized lot compared to the rest of the neighborhood. Our dining room has a slider that opens to the side yard that is the largest side of the pie shaped lot. The other homes like ours open to narrow side yard that is right up against the fence line. Our family room has doors that open to the back exactly like the others. That is their regular sized backyard and basically an additional one for us. Our garage is DH's tool room/workshop. There is a door of the entry hall to it. We use the front door coming to and leaving the house. It has a nice sized tiled entry which continues as a slightly narrower but still quite wide tiled hall leading to the back of the house.

I love how our house sits. It faces south, the kitchen is to the east and the family room is to the north. So we have sun all day but natural shade without needing covers by afternoon on both the east and north facing patio areas. The only thing we want to change is to replace a large window in the kitchen with doors to the large lot side like the dining room. Currently we use the back backyard door and walk around the corner of the house to get to the area.

My 180 year old house has four doors. In the 36 years I've lived here I have never used the front door which faces the sidewalk and street. It's very thick and only has a doorknocker, no bell and also has a heavy wooden storm door. Our carriage house sits at the back of our large lot. So we live off our side street (we're on a corner) and also use one of the doors on the back porch. The other door just leads to a long hallway to the front door.

We come and go through the garage. I prefer everyone else use the front door. I get very irked when DH opens the garage door and leaves it that way, people tend to then come through it for some reason. I have a back patio door that gets more use than my front door. Our walk out basement also has a door that is rarely used.

We use both the front door and the garage door. Right now the garage is a disaster so I park in the driveway. DH keeps his truck and trailer hooked up, so he's also in the driveway. Long ago, his garage door opener control quit, so he uses the front door unless the garage is open. Our houses are far apart and heavily wooded, so no one can see in the garage. Unless it's very cold, the garage is open if we are home.

The door to the deck seldom gets used since the dog died. And we have an odd door off the back hall that has been opened about twice in 25 years.

Family and close friends use the garage if it's open. Everyone else seems to use the front door. Deliveries are anybody's guess.

Garage side exit since we usually leave by car. Our garage door opener is intelligent (MyQ) so anytime it operates we receive a push notification and have the ability to monitor is by phone app.

Front entrance if we're enjoying our huge front porch for relaxing, conversation or wine.

Sunroom doors for back yard access.

The HOA and deed restriction requires garage doors to be closed when not in use. A + for neighborhood safety and appearance.

I live in New England and discovered long ago that many people (at least the ones with older homes anyway) never use their front doors. We only open ours on Halloween, to change the wreath/door decoration, when it's so hot we need the cross ventilation or when an ambulance is called (when my mom lived with us).

We have a door into the garage that is 3 steps from the door into the kitchen that we use 99.9% of the time. The garage is always being used for something other than cars. Our 2 cars are in the driveway - every house on our street has a garage and cars parked in their driveways every day with one exception.

I live in a small bungalow built in the late 50s. I have a front door, and a back door. We use the front door. When we first moved here we used the back door only to keep the cold out of the house. The back door is in the stair well to the basement and there is a door at the top of the stairs to the main floor. Over the years, we stopped using that one unless we were going into the back yard. We now have padlocked gates so nobody can enter the backyard from the front or the alley so it's front door only.

Whichever I use, I always try to go back in the other door, and it'll be locked. Then I have to go around to other side of the house. Inevitably.

We always park the cars in the garage so we mostly use the door from the garage to the house. If we are working in the yard we use the man door in the garage. The front door only get used for guests or to get package deliveries.

Front door. But we live in an old house.

Curious and sort of off topic but for those that enter through their garage. What kind of lock to you have on the door leading into the house? Project for this summer is clean out garage and park inside. Which made me wonder at types of locks used. Or none.

Visitors don't know which side is the front, they all assume their entering through the front. To those that leave your attached garage door open, doesn't that make your house colder in the winter?

We and everyone else come up my handicapped ramp onto the deck at the back of our house and enter the porch room which then comes into our dining room. We never use the front door or the garage to enter or exit the house.

Maifleur, we have a dead bolt on the door from the garage to the house. The doorknob doesn't have a key anymore. Long ago lost. You could put in a keyless deadbolt.

Raye, oh yea if you leave the garage door open in the winter it does leave some cold air in. That is why our man door in the garage is so convenient for taking out the trash, snowblower, and shovels in the winter. It also helps to keep the flies out of the garage in the summer.

My garage is attached to the side of the house, but we do not park cars in it - but we do have four bicycles and also use it for tool storage, plus it has an extra refrigerator and stand-up freezer. The front door to the garage is difficult to open, but we have a double-wide driveway, and we can park two cars side by side there if we want, but I generally park on the street and my brother parks in the driveway. Either way, the front door is easily accessible. The garage has a back door that we use for accessing it from the house, but we have to go through the back yard via the sliding glass door to get to it. The kitchen also has a door to the outside, but we seldom us it. It is much easier to access the back yard from the kitchen via the sliding door.

The worst weather we ever have is light rain, which is rare, and so it is always easy to use the front door. We have a large plant (not shown in the photo) on the right side of the door, and delivery people generally leave packages behind the plant, although some leave them right in front of the door. We're on an extremely quiet street (for traffic) and have never had a package stolen.

There is an iron gate to the back yard on the other side of the garage, and we use that when we want to take something directly to the back yard. We also leave it open when we have parties so that people do not have to go through the house, since we do all our entertaining in the back yard. Almost no one in our neighborhood parks in their garage, and I think this is because it is not that easy to get into the houses from the garages.

I have a deadbolt but what if I want to go somewhere? Deadbolt is useless and not certain I want to come home to someone being in the house.

Our door has like a turning thing on the inside of the house to lock or unlock the door and a key to lock or unlock the door from the garage.

I come in via the garage. Guests and UPS hit up the front. I keep forgetting about the ice out there..

The door between my garage and house is similar to Functionthenlook's set-up. The door is locked always. When we leave the house, the alarm is set.

We have a carport that is very close to our front door and it also has it's own entrance into the house. The front door though is much closer to the stairs that go up to the living area of the house so that's the door that gets used 100% of the time by everybody.

Actually we.ve been in our house for almost 30 years and except when we were doing renos to the house I don't think the carport door has ever been opened.

Our current house has many doors. One porch has two double doors that open into the kitchen along length of the porch, and at the end there is another large oak "main" door with sidelights, that opens into the "foyer". The other porch wraps around the living room, and there are 7 doors along this porch that can be used, 5 of them directly enter the living room, the 6th enters directly into a full bathroom that also has a door that opens into the living room. Further around the wrap-around porch is the 7th door which opens into the back of this "foyer" directly across from the oak "main" door. Additionally there is another door leading out of the mudroom off of the kitchen, leading out the back of the house to a tiny 5'x8' porch, that has stairs down to a stone patio. From this patio there are two more doors that enter into the fully finished basement.

For the most part we use the door that leads directly into the kitchen. Most other people come to the "main" oak door which is only a few feet away.

We have 3 doors, front door, door from the kitchen into the garage, and door from the sun-room into the backyard. Day to day, we use the kitchen door into the garage the most (because we are weirdos who actually park their cars in the garage : ), guests and service/delivery people use the front door. House guests usually use the front door to access their car(s) in the driveway instead of opening the garage each time.

Our house is 'all doors' -- You could break into our house from most directions. *Our* burglar just waited for my DH to take the dog for a walk by way of the garage, leaving the garage door up and the back hall door unlocked. Easy peasy. $20K in jewelry. I was in the jet tub (wearing my wedding/engagement rings) and heard *nothing*.

Our Doors: Formal Archtop Entry Into Foyer; East Yard to Back Hall; Garage to Back Hall, South Yard to Screened Porch.

15 French Doors (9 operational, pairs and singles): Kitchen to Patio, Kitchen to Porch, DR to Porch, DR to Terrace, two LR to Terrace.

We drive into the garage and close the overhead doors; enter into back hall then kitchen. We use the entry door to get mail at the street and to hang the flag. Guests use the entry door. Deliveries are made to the entry door (covered stoop). I open the garage for workmen to use the door to the back hall.

I'm sorry we didn't build a *wide* door from Yard to Garage for storage. Neighbors put a 'back' garage door opposite one of the front ones. I'd also like an exterior stair down to a door to the basement for techs to access the mechanicals without going through the house.

We have a front door used by company and for deliveries, a back door used only for going in and out of the back yard, a breezeway door that goes out to the dog run in the back yard, a door to the garage like the one functionthenlook posted and a side door in our garage that goes out to the pool/side yard.

When friends come over during the summer, they usually come in through the side yard/pool area.

I leave and enter through the garage, I don't lock the door from the garage to the house when I'm gone, but every other door is always locked and we lock the door to the garage at night.

Our garage door is only left open if we are outside in that area, kids playing on bikes, drawing with chalk, etc.

We use both the garage door and front door about equally. Garage door if we are coming from the car and front door for walks, dog walks, company and deliveries. For the back yard, we either use the door to the deck or out from the basement, especially when the deck stairs are covered with snow. I think I’ll go out the basement door right now and clean up some trash the dogs took out to the yard a few days ago.

I have a deadbolt but what if I want to go somewhere? Deadbolt is
useless and not certain I want to come home to someone being in the
house.

A deadbolt works the same, whether you're home or away. Inside is a thumb turn and outside is a key.

Simplisafe is an affordable security option.

We have deadbolts on entry, hall-to-garage, and hall-to-side yard doors. All the French doors have three point locks. A thief would love to get into your garage and find the person door into the house unlocked, but even if it were locked, he could break it down in privacy.

We left ourselves open to theft, but not even locking everything all the time and using an alarm system is going to prevent a burglar from 'breaking and entering'. No alarm system is going to bring the law in time to catch the thief who is in and out in under three minutes -- unless a patrol car happens to be passing your house.

Not all deadbolts have a lock on the outside that uses a key. Mine does not as it is separate from the locking mechanism. Older houses tend not to have the ones with the key on the opposite side or even have an opposite side.

It's easy to update to a newer, more secure deadbolt.

You're a handy person, treat yourself to one. :)

chisue,

A thief may be quick, but your alarm sounding off will tell you he/she has been there.

Based on a report by
the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Department of Criminal
Justice and Criminology, about 60% of convicted burglars stated the
presence of a security system influenced their decision to target
another home.

We use the entry in the garage as well and the hall it opens up to has an area available for coats, shoes and the like. I direct repair people to the door that offers them the quickest and least intrusive route to where they need to go. The front door is by the stairs and the garage is next to the kitchen.

I know alarms are a good idea, my mother had one and I took comfort in that. However, I also always felt inprisoned when I was there because she constantly had it on. After the neighbor found someone from down the road in their garage, we got a dog instead and she’s really good at letting us know when she hears something out of the norm going on.

What I’m curious to know is if people lock their access from the garage to their house. We have a 2nd door in the garage that opens to the back yard; all 3 of the doors have deadbolts that we use religiously, but I have a neighbor who told me she never locks the door from her garage to her house because it’s not an exterior door...she lives alone so that really gave me pause.

Aren't all deadbolts separate from the main lock? How would you enter if there's no key and the bolt has been thrown from inside?

Our deadbolts are keyed the same as the main locks on our doors; they just go farther into the door frame. When you lock our French doors they lock together and bolts go into the door frame at the top and the bottom. French doors and sliders without the 3-point locking mechanism are easy to force.

I agree with our local police that the best burglar alarm is a dog! I don't think professional burglars care about an alarm unless someone is in the home to hear the alert.

We live close to a police academy, and the new recruits regularly march/jog down our street (because it has so little traffic), chanting as they march. They sound like marines and of course stop all traffic while they are doing this, but they are polite about it and wave at me, if I wave at them. Sometimes I go outside to watch them jog in front of my house. This may have a deterrent effect on crime on my street, as it is extremely low.

Lukkiirish- our interior door from the garage to the house is locked at night but I don't lock it when I leave the house.

To get in our house, you have to either have a key to unlock a door or have the garage door opener.

Single cylinder deadbolts on any door leading to the house for fire safety. That including garage to house. Those are the ones with the turn latch for quick egress. Double cylinder on the door between the side yard and the garage. All doors are keyed alike. Anything with a padlock is also keyed alike to the extent possible.

My house had 3 doors (until recently): front, back which opens onto the patio behind the garage (garage has a back door that opens onto the same patio), and there was a door into the family room addition that opened onto the narrow side yard and walk. The addition had been built to serve as an office, and the door was for people coming to the office. In 26 years we never used this door as a door, only opening it in summer to get ventilation through its screen door. Last year I had it changed to a window, and so glad that I did! More light in the room all year.

So, front door for everything except when I want to be in the back yard, take out trash, or fetch something from the garage - which is now so full of yard and house equipment that there is not room to park the car inside (1941 single car garage).

My house has two doors directly to the outside; the front door, which opens into a small entrance hall, and one in the kitchen. My guests use my front door...ALWAYS.

I have a basement garage and always use the door from the garage into my basement. Very nice to have in nasty weather or even in very hot weather. I would never buy a house without an attached garage of some kind. The only "guests" who come in this way are my SIL or DGS if coming to do a chore for me that is outside. I have a keypad outside so they can open it and come in and get the tools they need.