Fit your home with a stunning French Door to boost your patio
It’s almost a sure thing that if you have a decent backyard / garden that having a set of French doors open out into it will really make a big change.
There’s nothing like throwing open a French door on a sunny day and just enjoying the fresh air in your face.
Made from a pair of side by side glazed door panels, French doors usually open outwards from the centre. You can have them configured to open inwards if that’s your preference.
However, inward opening doors do have a few drawbacks:
- When the outside is wet, if you open then they will drip on your interior flooring – thereby staining your wood or carpet.
- The doors themselves will need clear space to open – no furniture or ornaments within the radius of the door swing arc.
- Security wise, it’s potentially easier to force doors inwards than to leverage them outwards.
French Door Styling
The “original” French door design is to incorporate a lot of smaller glazed panes within the main frame – creating a sort of chessboard effect. The dividers are usually referred to as Georgian bars.
All about French doors here: https://www.upvcwindowsfitted.co.uk/upvc-french-doors/
For modern double glazed french doors, the Georgian bars can be “faked” by using inserts between the inner & outer panes of glass on the double glazed unit.
More contemporary French doors use a full height glazed section and no Georgian bars.
One limitation of using French patio doors is when you have a wider opening to deal with.
The widest door panel you could probably fit with no special strengthening is about 2ft 9ins or 838mm. So on average any opening wider than approximately 1.6 to 2.0m will need side panels.
Any opening over 2400mm is also likely to need top panels. Of course if you have a super wide opening, you could fit 2 sets of French doors side by side.
Some door sets can have a centre post (mullion) fiited. Whilst this makes the overal security better, it does tend to get in the way and in our opinion takes away the best thing about French doors – the nice clear opening.
