Make an Entrance with a new front door
Making a choice with regards to your home’s new type of entrance door is no lightly decision, it represents the beginning journey through your home and it’s the first aspect that any house guests or passer-by will be drawn to look at closely. Whilst it’s fairly obvious to determine a great looking door, it’s just as important to consider what makes your new choice of door reliable in terms of performance and security too!
At Albion, we have over 35 years of industry experience installing thousands of doors throughout the UK’s capital, and as such have used these decades of knowledge to help advice you on the best practices to consider when shopping for a new entrance door for your home.
What makes a door high quality?
- Aesthetically pleasing, a design that’s in-keeping with your home’s existing visual style
- Efficient acoustic and thermal insulation qualities for good quality of life
- Tailor-made to perfectly fit into your home’s front aperture
- Low maintenance: Easy to clean and resistant to the elements
- Highly secure with the ability to ward off potential intruders
- Long lifespan to represent a sound financial investment
- Industry tested for great performance and quality
A great selection of eye-catching door styles
Whereas previous entrance doors would often be prone to quickly showing their age due to their nature of being exposed to harsh elements and heavy wear, modern doors have developed significantly over the past few years. 21st century homeowners are now able to select from a wild amount of designs, with hundreds of types and sizes now readily available. Here they are:
uPVC front doors: A simple design that is always manufactured to a high specification, uPVC front doors are essentially a blank canvas which lets you create a visual aesthetic that’s wholly unique to your home. Highly affordable yet delivers excellent year round performance, there’s an extensive choice of door panels and glass designs on offer.
Pros: A highly durable door style with a low price entry point, able to be coloured to a plethora of shades to suit most home.
Cons: Quite hazardous for the environment, being an unsustainable resource.
Composite doors: Composite doors expertly mimic the appearance of traditional front doors blended with the high thermal performance and security levels modern technology can deliver. The insulated foam core provides a higher thermal resistance than standard timber doors and once installed, you’ll never have to worry about painting, fading or cracking again.
Pros: Being engineered using a mixture of materials pressed together for increased protection, composite doors are unrivalled in terms of energy efficiency. Indistinguishable from wooden doors, they are highly attractive and secure.
Cons: Tends to be more expensive than other door options.
Stable doors: Stable styles of door offer the unique ability to ventilate your home as required without the need to fully open up the panel, offering exceptional security that’s ideal for when little tykes are running around. Exceedingly low thresholds in both uPVC and aluminium ensures transitioning into your home is always an easy experience.
Pros: The split-panel design of every stable door’s panel makes the design the best in terms of ventilation capability.
Cons: As with composite doors, stable doors can be quite costly.
French doors: Offering all the benefits of modern uPVC including noise reduction, low maintenance, security and energy efficiency, Albion French Doors are available with various threshold options to ensure that your garden is always readily accessible to you with two classic door panels that effortlessly open outwards.
Pros: Feature two doors which operate independently of one another, acting as great dividers to manage light entry and define space.
Cons: Other rear entrance doors are able to provide wider outside views.
Bifold doors: Bi-folding doors seamlessly merge your property with a garden or patio, making the transition much more natural and welcoming. This makes for a more open living space and an increased capability to flood your home with light. In either aluminium or uPVC, adjustable thresholds and open space is always possible.
Pros: Folding panel action neatly tucks away to one side to never impede on living space, offering generous outside views.
Cons: Often required to take up an entire wall of your home.
Patio doors: Sliding patio doors offer all homeowners a unique combination of both style and practicality. They simultaneously are able to offer easy access to the garden whilst never impeding on your internal living space, largely due to their ability to create a large opening by sliding efficiently next to each other. Patio doors typically have a large glass surface area, meaning outside views are never too far away.
Pros: Available in various configurable panel options ranging from 2 to 4 depending on aperture, the most cost-effective patio door style.
Cons: Unless tinted, patio doors feature a large glass surface area that don’t allow for a lot of privacy.
Features to look out for
Glazed entrance doors
For those considering a fully glazed entrance door, you’ll be spoilt for choice in terms of the amount of glass options to choose from. With clear, etched, bevelled, tinted and leaded glass styles all providing their own unique benefits, not only will a fully glazed door allow you to enjoy a generous amount of natural light, but get creative also.
Where possible, we’d recommend opting for a glass style that also makes use of low-e glazing to enjoy maximum energy efficiency with your newly installed sealed unit. If at all possible, glazing that resists UV rays will also prevent damage to your home’s internal furniture.
Energy efficient entrance doors
Whilst most modern styles of entrance door are designed and engineered with optimal energy efficiency in mind, it goes without saying that the higher quality the material, the less likely it is that heat will escape from your home. Composites offer all of the insulating benefits of aluminium, uPVC and timber in one stylish door, yet where not possible ensure your door’s frame is multi-chambered to help retain warmth.
When you consider all the insulating components, a composite door outperforms other options. However, the same type of door can achieve different energy ratings depending on its components and the way it’s manufactured, as well as installation quality. Ask your door company about the energy ratings that your chosen style can achieve.
Secure entrance doors
Modern door slabs are thicker than ever before, with reinforced and securely fitted frames that ensure the unit is weathertight and tougher to break into. As well as this, innovations in locking systems and hardware have continued to grow, with almost every door sporting multi-point locking as standard to ensure the door is secured to its frame at regular intersections.
We’ll give you the tools to transform your London Home!
A well-established home improvement company that’s been operating throughout South London for well over 35 years, at Albion Windows we pride ourselves on being able to deliver a family-run yet professional service in areas such as Croydon, Surrey, Clapham and beyond. We’ll provide personal care and attention when operating your home, treating it as if it is our home.
Every door supplied by Albion Windows means that you will always receive a high quality product that is fully customisable to suit the character and personality of your home or property, in whatever selected style. We guarantee to have a door solution that meets your specific requirements somewhere within our eclectic range of options.
