Beside the door on the secure side, within easy reach of everyone using it - and the height range is set by local accessibility rules.

Most territories publish a mounting height range and a maximum reach distance intended to work for standing and seated users alike. Those figures differ, so use the local one.

Distance from the door leaf matters for usability. A button on the opposite wall is not found by someone leaving quickly.

It should be on the handle side rather than the hinge side, so the person is not reaching across the opening door.

Avoid any position a hand or a wire could reach from outside - beside glazing, at a letterplate, or low enough to be caught under the door.

On double doors and lobbies, decide which leaf carries the button before first fix. Retrofitting means chasing a wall.

Momentary for normal use; maintained only where the door genuinely needs to be held unlocked, and then only if the system reports that it is.

A momentary button releases the lock for a timed period - typically a few seconds - and the door relocks by itself.

A maintained or latching switch holds the door unlocked until someone operates it again. That suits a delivery bay during a delivery or a reception door during opening hours.

The risk is obvious: left latched at the end of the day, the door is simply unlocked.

Where a latching function is used, it should report its state to the access system so a door left unlocked is visible on the operator's display and alarms after hours.

A scheduled unlock configured in the software is usually a better answer than a latching button, because it relocks itself.

On any door where it must be found in poor light, yes - and green illumination is the widely understood convention for an exit device.

An unlit button in a corridor with the lights off is not found by someone who does not already know where it is.

Illumination also indicates the device has power, which is a useful passive check that the door is live.

Some buttons change colour or state when operated, confirming to the user that the door has released rather than leaving them pushing repeatedly.

Check the current draw. Illuminated buttons across a large site add up against the panel's power and standby budget.

Where the button is on an escape route, colour and labelling may be prescribed by local regulation rather than left to preference.

Sealed stainless steel for wet, external and public areas; a plastic surface unit for ordinary interiors; anti-tamper fixings anywhere the public can reach.

Ingress protection matters outdoors and in wash-down areas, and a button that fills with water fails closed or open unpredictably.

Stainless steel plates resist impact and cleaning chemicals, and look right in healthcare and food environments.

Vandal resistance is about the fixing as much as the material. Exposed screws mean the unit can be removed and the wires reached.

Touch-sensitive and no-touch buttons avoid a mechanical switch that wears out and suit hygiene-sensitive settings, at the cost of needing power and being harder to operate with gloves.

For high-traffic doors, check the rated operating cycles. A button pressed hundreds of times a day wears out faster than the door.

No. It depends on the controller and the lock circuit, so it is not the provision that has to work when those have failed.

Pressing the button signals the controller, which drops the lock output. If the controller has failed or lost power, nothing happens.

The emergency release is a separate device whose contacts break the lock supply directly, and local fire rules generally require it independently of any exit button.

Confusing the two is a common and serious design error, and it is usually discovered at inspection rather than in use.

Both may appear on the same door: a button for everyday exits and an emergency release for the failure case.

Get the requirement from the local authority. Which doors need what is a fire engineering answer, not a security preference.

Yes, and it should be - logging operations shows how the door is used and reveals misuse.

Each press can be reported to the controller as an event and recorded in the audit trail alongside credential activity.

That distinguishes a legitimate exit from a forced door and gives the timers something to be tuned against.

Repeated presses in quick succession usually mean the release time is too short or the lock is sticking.

Monitoring a latching button's state is more important still, because it is the only way a door left unlocked becomes visible.

Tamper monitoring on the device itself catches interference, and supervised wiring detects a shorted cable - which would otherwise hold the door permanently released.

Long enough to open the door and step through, short enough that the door is not standing available - a few seconds, tuned per door.

The timer runs in the controller, not in the button, so it is a configuration setting rather than a hardware choice.

Doors used with trolleys, wheelchairs or deliveries need longer than a personnel door.

Many controllers stop the timer early when the door contact shows the door has opened and closed again, which is the tidiest behaviour and worth enabling.

Too long a release lets a second person follow through unrecorded, which is a tailgating exposure rather than a nuisance.

Review the timings after the door has been in service. Commissioning values are guesses; a few weeks of events show what is actually needed.