How often should you lubricate door hinges and locks?
Updated July 2026
Lubricate every exterior door's hinges and locks once a year (fall is the natural slot, before cold weather stiffens everything), using dry PTFE or graphite in the lock cylinders and a drop of light machine oil or silicone on hinge pins and latches. The lube split matters more than the schedule: oily lubricants inside a lock cylinder collect dust into an abrasive paste that eventually gums the pins; dry lubes don't. This is the whole house in ten minutes, and it's honestly a low-stakes comfort task, right up until the deadbolt seizes with you on the wrong side of it.
What changes the interval
| Your situation | Interval | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Exterior doors (hinges, deadbolt, knob latch) | Yearly | Weather exposure plus daily cycles; the doors that matter most |
| Interior doors | When they squeak | Purely a comfort task indoors; the squeaky one gets the oil |
| Coastal or road-salt climate | Every 6 months | Salt air corrodes cylinders and hinge pins visibly faster |
| Key starting to stick or need jiggling | Lube now, and copy the key | A sticking cylinder is pre-failure; a worn key accelerates it |
| Smart lock | Yearly lube + battery swap | The mechanical bolt underneath is still a bolt; batteries yearly or at first warning |
| Sliding doors and windows | Yearly, silicone on tracks | Same trip, same can, dirt-cheap smoothness |
The cost of skipping it
What skipping it costs: modest, honestly: this is a task you do because it's ten minutes against a handful of annoying failures. The realistic bad endings: a corroded, gummed deadbolt that seizes or eats a key on a cold night ($100–250 locksmith call, more after hours), a key snapped off in a stiff cylinder, sagging hinge pins that make the door drag and the latch miss the strike plate, and the slow torture of a house full of squeaks. A can of dry PTFE and a bottle of 3-in-1 oil together run about $12 and last a decade.
How to do it (10–15 minutes for the whole house · DIY)
- Locks: squirt dry PTFE (or puff graphite) directly into each exterior lock’s keyway, insert the key, and run it in and out and through a few full turns to spread it. Wipe the key.
- Sticky cylinder? Repeat the dry lube; if the key still binds, the fix is a locksmith re-pin or new cylinder, not more lubricant.
- Hinges: one drop of light machine oil or a shot of silicone at the top of each pin, then swing the door a dozen times; wipe drips before they reach the paint.
- A squeak that survives oiling: pop the hinge pin (nail from below), wipe it clean, oil, and reseat.
- Latches and strike plates: a dab on the latch tongue; if the door needs a lift-and-shove to latch, tighten hinge screws (swap one per hinge for a 3-inch screw into the stud, which cures most door sag).
- Same trip: silicone on sliding-door and window tracks, and on exterior gate hardware.
Knowing the interval is the easy half. OnOtto reminds you at the right interval, and it won't let you snooze it into next year. Tasks persist until they're done, and completing the yearly hardware pass schedules the next one automatically.
Put this on autopilot, free for 30 daysFrequently asked questions
Why not WD-40 in the locks? It’s right there.
Classic WD-40 is a water-displacing solvent, not a lubricant: it flushes and briefly slicks, then evaporates and leaves the cylinder drier than before, having also washed dust deeper into the pins. It's fine for freeing a corroded hinge pin. For lock cylinders, use dry PTFE or graphite: they lubricate without giving dust anything to stick to. (Graphite and PTFE don't mix well; pick one per lock and stay with it.)
My key sticks even after lubricating. What’s actually wrong?
In rough order: the key itself is worn (try a fresh copy cut from the original code, not from another worn copy), the cylinder pins are worn or gunked past what lube fixes (locksmith re-pin, $80–150), or the door has sagged so the bolt binds against the strike plate. Test by lifting the door handle while turning; if that helps, fix the hinges and strike alignment, not the lock.
Is this really worth a scheduled reminder?
On its own, barely, which is exactly why it never happens and why deadbolts get discovered seized. The trick is bundling: it's a ten-minute item that rides along with the fall weatherstripping-and-detectors sweep. That's how OnOtto treats the small stuff: batch it with the season so remembering costs nothing.