Hmm… I think home exterior doors usually swing inwards in the US. All the commercial ones I can remember right now go out.
Could be more mixed in Europe, particularly the bits tourists visit, due to the vastly older buildings.
Outward swinging doors also ought to be a lot harder to force open from the outside. Can’t just break the latching mechanism.
The problem is, it’s harder to make the latch mechanism tamper resistant from the side it swings toward. Not impossible, but enough so that it tends not to be done unless the door is a serious escape path along a stampede route.
That’s funny, I would’ve expected a greater impetus to ban doorknobs in Toronto.
I remember noticing that exterior doors in Scandinavia open outward - makes sense anywhere you’d have wind and harsh weather to have the wind keeping the door closed more tightly so you’d get a better seal.
I could see where reversing the handle could keep a cat in, but not dogs especially dogs that jump. They’d just keep slamming on it until they popped it. That one dog I had decided to eat a hollow-core wood door once because I was outside and he wanted to guard me. It was a thing with him. When he busted through the lever handle, he just sat on the doorstep watching for me to come home. But it could be dangerous to a dog that wanders off, or a homeowner who gets sued by some guest the dog bites. It’s a just plain dumb idea.
But it’s not alarming enough without the CAPS!!!
Absolutely 
I would propose that it’s more beneficial to address that than to attempt perfection.
Doorknobs are one of the things that puzzle me when I’m in countries that use them (so England, usually). They’re more annoying to use than handles, and have no obvious benefits, so … why? History, I guess?
History. Tradition. Ease of manufacturing, perhaps. Not being strongly oriented was an advantage when people were using knobs threaded onto spindles. Give me time and I’ll come up with more.
And, yeah, cat resistance.
It will be fun when the streets of Vancouver are full of toddlers and pets while the adults in charge have either ripped belt loops or are caught in said door handle. Awesome.
Of course there are ways to manage that… but given that another ideal is that in an emergency opening the door should require only a single action, it may get more complicated.
Of course one can also ponder the option of pushbars. Or touchbars, these days.
(The one cabinet I really want to keep the cats out of has magnet-activated latches… the best childproofing mechanism I’ve yet seen. Easy to install, no visible reference point, non-obvious internaction which immediately puts it above toddler level, and the magnetic “key” is easy to hang from any convenient scrap of metal (preferably out of the kids’ reach.)
We have those locks, they are the best.
In favor of doorknobs, my insulin-pump wearing boyfriend does fear doorhandles.
Where I live the reason residential doors open inward is straightforward - it’s cold enough in Winter that you really need double doors for insulation. A big building can have a big enough alcove between the doors that they can both open outward, but in a small house that would be a significant chunk of the total floor space. So you pretty much have to have the inner door open inward, and the outer one open outward.
KEEP DOOR HANDLES ROUND! FIGHT THE MAN!
Seriously though, I agree with this:
And also, I’m pretty sure that this:
would constitute a violation of building code nevertheless (though I suppose it depends on the particular codes in the particular locale). If the building inspector inspects and approves a new structure, it’s supposed to stay the way it was at the time. For example, if, after your new structure is approved, and then you remove some wall framing and frame in a door, that’s definitely an infraction.
Also, because if there are snow drifts and your residential doors open outward, you can become stuck in your house.
And, baby/toddler resistance. All you have to do is slip a plastic cover over a knob that you squeeze, the kids lose the ability to roam freely - but you don’t have walk around locking and unlocking your own doors all day.
I now have levers, myself, with electronic locks. I like them very well, as I’m one of those disabled people they’re supposed to help. But I still wouldn’t do this with small kids or dogs around. Might’ve been smarter to simply require installation of lever handles in rentals when a disabled person requests them, just the wholesale rule is lame. I’d happy most of the time if doors simply weren’t allowed to stick!
But then, I don’t know how such issues usually get handled in Canada. In the US under the Fair Housing Act, the landlord pays for all ordinary accessibility needs, but not past the point where it creates undue financial burden or hardship to other tenants. At that point, the disabled person can install ramps or whatever else they need (theoretically without a fight) - but at their own expense.
dragonfrog - same here. In my building, the house doors go inward, but the lobby and fire doors go outward. We have open walkways, so I can’t exactly say ‘exterior’ doors and have it make sense.
Doorknobs, like faucets, are fixtures that can be replaced. But it’s like smoke alarms, you can take them out anytime you want and it’s not against code, it’s just a bad idea and the owner is fully responsible when they die in a fire.
You can take that wall out and put in a door all you want, but your insurance is going to laugh at you when the house falls in.
You haven’t met my toddlers and preschoolers who have the manual dexterity and strength of an adult. Escape and running down the street to their brother’s school have been real issues, so much so that the fix means their “elderly” grandparents need assistance to exit the building. Sometimes a solution makes much larger problems that puts others in danger, something that needs to be considered.
I know that around here, doorknobs can replaced without additional approval, but I figured that was only because there aren’t any restrictions on the type of handle that must be used. But I don’t know what the case is up there, so I’ll believe you.
Two further things:
It’s really not that difficult or risky to remove enough wall framing to frame a door in. But that’s neither here nor there.
At least in the specific case of my cousin, who had some plans for a structure with living area in it denied recently, he wasn’t allowed to locate a door in a particular location, because the planning board limited the amount of living space allowed in the building, and counted the storage space across the hall as additional living area, because it was accessible from the living area without going outside. His plans have since been approved, when he readjusted them so that the storage area had an outside door and no inside one. Were he to later add an inside door (which he is going to do, but don’t tell), he would have more than the allowed amount of living area, and would be breaking the law.
In a 100-year-old-house where all the stresses have shifted and things that weren’t supposed be load-bearing now are, and where there may be several generations of wiring (and possibly gaslight plumbing) in the walls, less so.
(When I opened a passage from LR to DR – even though there was evidence that it had been open at some time in the past – they put a parallam beam across the space rather than just header and cripple studs. And I think they were right.)
Basic building codes are well standardized. But there are lots of local variations. In the end, it’s a question of what your local inspectors will pass on. I’d love to install alternate-tread stairs to the basement, but that’s Not Acceptable here. I may yet do it, and undo it before any inspections, but…
