Ask three integrators to electrify the same door and you can get three different devices on the quote. That is not because two of them are wrong. It is because "which lock?" is usually answered from the wrong end — from the catalogue, the price sheet, or whatever the installer keeps on the van — instead of from the door.
The door decides. Its swing, its frame, its rating, its position on the route out of the building and the hardware already hanging on it eliminate most options before anyone opens a catalogue. By the time you have honestly answered four questions about the opening, there is often only one device left, and occasionally none — which is itself useful, because it means the door has to change before the electronics can.
This article covers the four device families and the door conditions that select them. It does not re-argue the code analysis: what a lock does on power loss is covered in fail-safe vs fail-secure, and the treatment of electromagnetic locks in the BC Building Code is covered in electromagnetic locks and the BC Building Code. Read those alongside this one. Here we are standing at the opening with a tape measure.
The four questions that come before the catalogue
Run these in order. Each one closes doors on the shortlist.
1. Is this door on the way out? Not "is it an exterior door" — is it part of how a person leaves. An exit door and a principal entrance door to a building are governed by Article 3.4.6.16; a door inside the floor area, such as a suite door opening into a corridor, is governed instead by Article 3.3.1.13. Both impose a near-identical test: openable from the inside in one releasing operation, without keys, special devices or specialized knowledge. If the answer is yes under either provision, the electronics must not be what stands between a person and the way out.
2. Is the assembly rated? A rated opening is a system — door, frame, hinges, closer and latching hardware — tested and labelled together. Article 3.1.8.15 deals with door latches and positive latching in a fire separation. A door required to latch has to keep latching when the building is on fire and the power may be gone. This question eliminates more devices than any other, and it is the one most often skipped, because the label is painted over or hidden on the hinge edge.
3. Which way does it swing, and what is the frame made of? A hollow metal frame, an aluminium storefront frame with a narrow stile and a wood frame in an older building each accept a different amount of surgery. This is where the retrofit budget actually lives.
4. Is there hardware worth keeping? A good mortise lock or a serviceable exit device already on the door is an asset. Electrifying what is there is usually cheaper and more code-defensible than adding a second device beside it — and a second locking device on a door that already has one is how buildings fail the one-releasing-operation test.
Now the devices.
Electric strikes — electrify the frame, keep the latch
An electric strike replaces the fixed strike plate in the frame with a hinged keeper that can be released electrically. The door's existing latch is untouched: the lever, the mortise lock, the deadlatch all stay. When the strike is energized to release, the keeper pivots and the latch slips past it.
What door it suits. Doors that already have a decent latch and a frame you are allowed to cut — an office suite entrance, a back-of-house door, a tenant door in a hollow metal frame. The inside lever still retracts the latch mechanically, so egress never runs through the electronics.
Power failure. Both behaviours are available in the product family — the fail-safe/fail-secure choice at its most explicit, decided per door before the box is opened. Fail-secure is the common and usually correct configuration: the strike stays locked, nobody gets in, and the person inside turns the lever and leaves. That traps nobody, because the lever was never electric.
What it demands of the frame. This is the catch. The frame has to be cut, and the cut has to be right. Faceplate, pocket depth and alignment with the latch are all frame work, and in an aluminium storefront frame the available depth in the stile is often the constraint that ends the conversation. Older wood frames may have nothing solid behind the strike location. A strike fitted slightly out of alignment produces the most annoying failure in access control: a door that reads the card, buzzes and does not open — or worse, one that looks secure with its latch resting on the edge of a keeper.
The other catch. A strike releases the latch. It does not pull the door open and it does not close it. On a rated opening the strike has to hold the latch reliably in the unpowered state, which is a product-selection question rather than an assumption.
Electromagnetic locks — no moving parts, and the heaviest obligations
A mag lock is an electromagnet on the frame and a steel armature plate on the door. Energize the magnet, the plate is held, the door will not open. There is no latch and there are no moving parts, which is precisely why people like them: nothing to bind, nothing to wear out, and they are forgiving of a door that is out of alignment.
What door it suits. Doors with no latch to work with or no frame to cut — a pair of glass doors, an aluminium storefront, a gate, a door that never latched properly. They are also reached for on interior doors along the route to an exit, which is where the trouble usually starts.
Power failure. A mag lock holds by power and therefore releases when power is lost. There is no other option; that is the physics of the device. It is inherently fail-safe, and that single fact is the source of both its appeal and its code baggage, because it means the electronics are the lock. Whatever releases that door on the way out is part of the electrified scheme, and if the scheme is wrong there is no mechanical fallback underneath it.
What it demands. Physically, very little: a bracket, an armature plate, alignment within tolerance and clean power. Legally, more than any other device here. Electromagnetic locks are addressed in the BC Building Code at Sentences 3.4.6.16.(5) and 3.4.6.16.(6), and they are permitted subject to conditions — a contingent permission that an installation can drift out of. We are not reciting those conditions here, and you should be wary of anyone who recites them from memory rather than from the current Code for your door and occupancy. The detail, including the sentence numbers that moved in the 2024 edition, is in the electromagnetic locks article.
Two consequences follow. A mag lock brings a release scheme with it — request-to-exit, a release device, fire alarm interface — and that scheme is a maintained system, not a one-time install. And the BC Fire Code puts egress door testing on a recurring schedule under Article 2.7.2.1, with electromagnetic locks on the longer interval. A device with no moving parts still carries a testing obligation, and the longer interval is exactly the task that vanishes with one change of building manager.
And plainly: holding a door shut with a magnet is not the same as latching it. On a door in a fire separation that is required to latch, a magnet does not satisfy that requirement, and it releases at the worst possible moment for the separation.
Electrified exit devices — for the door that already has a push bar
An exit device — the horizontal bar across a door that releases the latch when pushed — exists specifically so that a person leaving performs one motion with no knowledge and no key. Electrifying one adds control without touching that behaviour: electric latch retraction pulls the latch back for authorized entry from outside, or an electrified trim controls the outside lever while the bar stays purely mechanical.
What door it suits. Any door that already has a push bar, and any door on an exit route where you need control from outside without adding a second thing a person has to operate on the way out — stairwell doors, rear exits, doors on a required exit route from an assembly space.
Power failure. The important part: the bar keeps working. Push it and the latch retracts, powered or not, because that release is mechanical. Loss of power removes the convenience on the outside and leaves egress exactly as it was. Article 3.4.6.16.(4) also limits the force required to open an exit door once the latch is released — a reason to keep the closer properly adjusted rather than cranked down.
What it demands. Money and a power transfer. Electric latch retraction needs current delivered to the moving door leaf — an electric hinge or a door loop — and a supply sized for the inrush when the latch pulls. On a rated opening the device has to be listed for that use and the door prep has to match. This is the family where saving on the power supply produces intermittent faults that get blamed on the access control panel for a year.
Electrified mortise locks — control inside the lock body
A mortise lock lives in a pocket cut into the edge of the door and carries the latch, the deadbolt and both levers in one body. The electrified version adds a solenoid inside that body which controls whether the outside lever is connected to the latch.
What door it suits. Doors that already have a mortise lock — common in institutional, healthcare and older commercial buildings — and any door where you want the hardware to look and feel entirely ordinary. The frame is left alone: no strike cutting, no surface-mounted magnet, no bar.
Power failure. Configurable. Fail-secure is usual: the outside lever stays disconnected, the inside lever always retracts the latch mechanically, and the door latches positively — which makes this family the sensible answer on a rated door that has to keep latching. But from the inside, a plain mechanical lever and a fail-secure electrified one are indistinguishable while the power is on. The only way to know which you own is to kill the power and pull the handle.
What it demands. A mortise pocket, which is significant machining, and again a power transfer through a hinge or loop, because the electrified component sits inside the door. On a retrofit, if the existing pocket does not match the new lock's case dimensions, you are into door prep that may not be possible on a rated leaf without voiding the label.
Putting it back on paper
The output is a door schedule — every controlled opening in a row, with the device, its power-loss behaviour, which provision the door is assessed under, and how a person inside gets out when the system is dead. Without it, the reasoning lives in an installer's head and leaves with them.
Three things to ask anyone quoting hardware, per door and in writing: which device family and why this door selects it; what happens on power loss, on fire alarm and on request to exit; and, if the opening is rated, what the door and hardware labels say. Responsibility for compliance attaches to the owner under Division A, Article 1.2.1.2, whoever installed it.
Then do the one test that cannot be reasoned about. Cut the power, try the inside handle, write down what happened.
