in-swinging doors are much easier to break into and are hardly ever used... also, "swing in direction of travel" normally does not apply to individual residential units/houses.

Without looking at the code, I have never seen an apartment door not swing in. 

I have yet to see a residential entry door that swings out.

 Non Sequitur, beacuse it's easier for police to break in doors should open inside.

*ooops*

just re-read my post... total flop. My intention was to add "yet out-swing doors are hardly ever used".  I'll chalk that up to it being Wednesday afternoon.

They don't swing out because by code they don't have to. Plus if you swing them into the hallway, you are encroaching into the path of egress and you would have to take another look at your hallway width

imagine you're carrying a bag of groceries into the apartment.

imagine your door swings outwards.

imagine how many people will curse your name on the daily.

i don't understand why certain architects don't think about things in this manner.

^ Because they are clueless and the training sucks.

An out swing should only happen if you are trying to accommodate a tight clearance for accessibility. It is very rare for personal space to have an out swinging door, this is true for apartments, hotel rooms and offices.  also common for restrooms. It is easier to weather strip and provide smoke and noise blocking if the door swings into a space that is to be sealed off from noise or smoke.

But it is mostly a cultural thing with the door swinging direction.

Out-swing doors are much easier to weatherstrip. 

On a side note, try to find an in-swing French door that doesn't leak.

Hmmm...I'm interested in others take that in-swinging doors are to allow police to more easily break into your home/apartment.

I'd been told that it was to prevent thieves from easily breaking in.  An out-swing door has the hinges on the outside, so all a thief had to do was take out the hinge pins, and they could remove the door, no matter how many locks you had on the strike side of the door (I know that there are hinges now-a-day whose pins can't be removed unless the door is in the open position, but I'm assuming these didn't exist 200 years ago).

The newer explanation seems like an interesting reflection of the times...NRA paranoia dovetailing very nicely with the very real militarization of the police.

out-swinging doors swing out into hallways, so you could hit people walking in the hall.

residential doors like in a single family house will swing in because you often also have a screen door.  it would be hard to hinge 2 doors in one opening that both have the same swing.

i don't think forced police access has anything to do with it.  nice conspiracy theory though.

if you have 75 people shacked up there the door will need to swing out

^ someone's been having fun with PA permits, heh?

damn you null, you just reminded I owe someone something......

It's a cultural thing. In the United States, residential doors always swing IN to the more private space from the more public space, despite what the code says about exit travel pathways. This is a deeply ingrained cultural expectation that people react negatively to if it's not done that way. So the front door to a unit or home swings IN. Bedroom and bathroom doors swing IN.

In other parts of the world, different cultural expectations prevail. In some parts of Europe, the front door of a unit swings OUT.

There is no inherent reason which makes one better than the other. It's not about actual security (for which each has its strengths and weaknesses), but the perception of security and privacy. It's just what people are used to and expect. However, inswing doors do take up clear floor area in small spaces like bathrooms. That's a major reason bathrooms in US apartments are so huge (something that often surprises people from other countries who see them), because you can't have a door swing into a required clear floor space for wheelchair accessibility, even in a Type B unit.

A sudden, sharp drop in barometric pressure associated with a severe storm or hurricane will more easily force open an outwardly opening door. Also, winds hitting the door at an oblique angle will create a lift or suction effect pulling the door outward in addition to the barometric pressure drop effect. If an outside opening door does fly open it can be difficult or impossible to close against the storm winds.