The Lockin V5 Vision is sold as two distinct products — a left hand version and a right hand version. They are not the same lock with a setting toggled. The handle mechanism and the internal mortise engagement differ physically.
Order the wrong one and there is no software fix. So it’s worth five minutes to get it right.
Why the conventions confuse everyone
Here’s the thing nobody tells you: door handing conventions genuinely contradict each other. The North American convention and several European conventions determine handing from opposite sides of the door. Chinese manufacturers, Lockin included, tend to follow yet another.
So if you search “how to tell if a door is left or right handed,” you will find confident, authoritative answers that disagree. People who follow one of them carefully still order the wrong lock. That is not carelessness — the sources really do conflict.
Ignore the conventions. Use the physical description below instead, and there’s nothing to get backwards.
The foolproof method
Stand outside the door. Outside means the side you approach from when you’re entering — the corridor for an apartment, the driveway or garden for a villa. This is the side the face recognition camera has to look out from.
Now answer one question: which side are the hinges on?
- Hinges on your left → the door opens towards your left, and the handle sits on the right
- Hinges on your right → the door opens towards your right, and the handle sits on the left
Don’t translate that into “left hand” or “right hand” yourself. Just tell us the hinge side and whether the door pulls towards you or pushes away from you as you enter. Those two facts describe the door completely and unambiguously, and we’ll match the correct SKU. That removes the convention problem entirely.
The thirty-second version
Stand outside, take a photo straight on showing the whole door with the hinges and handle visible, and send it to us. That resolves it faster than any description, and it also lets us flag anything else that will cause trouble — stile width, an unusual frame, a mortise type that needs checking.
Check these at the same time
Handing is the one people get wrong, but it isn’t the only thing that stops an installation on the day.
Door thickness. Measure the edge of the door, not the frame. Smart locks have a supported thickness range and doors outside it need a different spindle or a different lock.
Stile width. The width of the vertical section of door beside the glass or panel. Narrow aluminium stiles — extremely common on UAE apartment and balcony doors — cannot physically take a wide lock body. Measure it.
Existing mortise type and backset. The backset is the distance from the door edge to the centre of the existing lock cylinder. This decides whether your current mortise can be reused or has to be replaced.
Which way the door swings. Inward and outward opening doors behave differently with an auto-lock feature, and outward-opening doors are more exposed to sun and dust on the outdoor panel.
Camera sightline. Specific to the Vision. The face recognition unit needs a clear view of an approaching person at roughly head height. If your door sits in a deep recess, behind a security screen, or at the end of a narrow passage, check the approach angle before you commit.
Sun exposure, which matters more here than elsewhere
Worth flagging for the Vision in particular. Face recognition uses structured infrared light, and direct low-angle sun carries a lot of IR. A west-facing exterior door taking full afternoon sun can degrade face recognition at exactly the time of day people are coming home.
This isn’t a reason to avoid the lock — it has fingerprint, PIN, NFC and key as alternatives. But if your door faces west and is fully exposed, either plan some shade or consider a vein-based model like the V5 Max as your primary method instead. Our comparison of how each biometric method fails covers this in more detail.
Heat is the other consideration. An outdoor panel in direct summer sun runs hot, and heat is hard on batteries. Door material affects this too — a dark aluminium door in July is a genuinely hostile mounting surface.
If you’ve already ordered the wrong one
Contact us before you attempt installation. An unopened, uninstalled lock is straightforward to exchange. One that’s been drilled for is not. If the box is open but nothing has been mounted or modified, get in touch and we’ll sort it.
Before you order at all
Two things worth confirming ahead of the lock itself:
If you rent, check where you stand on door modifications — Dubai tenancy law and your deposit. If you’re in a managed community, check the building rules; Emaar, Damac, Nakheel and others each have their own position on door changes and fire doors, and an NOC is often required.
And if you’re still deciding between the Vision and the rest of the range, our guide to the nine Lockin models sets out which one belongs on which door.
