Are you looking to introduce more light and bring a sense of the outdoors into your home? Then you’ve probably considered a wall of folding doors and if you haven’t, then you should.
Bifold doors not only fill a room with natural light, making it feel bigger, brighter and more beautiful, they effortlessly blur the break between your inside and outdoor space. This house-to-garden connection is ideal for the warmer months, allowing summer hospitality to spill out from the home and into the garden. Whereas in the winter, when it’s dark and gloomy and your confined to the four walls of your home, bifold doors are a superb way to bring the outdoors in, letting that much needed natural light flow into your property.
While, it’s easy to see the appeal of bifold doors, there are some elements you need to think about before installing them. With this in mind, here are 4 IDEAL things to consider before buying bifold doors.
THE MATERIAL
The choice of material for bifold doors is usually between timber or aluminium. Timber has a traditional look which can seemingly make the material more appropriate for use on a period property, should your residence be one. However, timber’s pleasing appearance depends on regular maintenance without which the wood could rot, as cautioned on the Real Homes site.
Providers of sustainable timber windows and doors, Bereco, comments on the options available when it comes to timber bifolding doors: “By maximising the opening area with their folding door leaf design, timber folding doors make a feature of both your living space and outdoor area. When it comes to rear extensions, garden rooms and open plan living/dining spaces, a folding door can completely open up the back of your home and has become a very popular way to make the best use of living space.’
Bifold doors can be designed in different pane numbers and can span up to ten metres. You also have the option of being able to open one door as a single leaf door if you want to gain access without opening up the whole expanse.
With aluminium doors, on the other hand, upkeep efforts on your part can be almost entirely unnecessary. Furthermore, various colours and finishes are available for frames of aluminium doors making it more of an innovative, modern design statement.
Consider the example of bi fold doors available from the Gloucestershire-based company Bifold Shop. When ordering aluminium doors from this company, you can choose from 200 different colours.
DURABILITY
How long they last can largely depend on not just the material that is chosen for those doors but also your own maintenance efforts. If you opt for aluminium doors, those will feature a powder-coated finish that never needs re-coating, says Homebuilding & Renovating.
And if you are do notice a visual deterioration in your doors, a fix is fairly easy; a simple aluminum restoration cleaning solution can be found on the high-street, and works well at restoring your doors to their former glory.
However, it’s a more complicated situation if you choose wooden doors instead. To maintain their look, you will need to have these doors regularly painted or varnished. This obligation might count against you ultimately selecting wood for your bifold doors.
SECURITY
You shouldn’t purchase particular bifold doors unless they meet certain security criteria. That should include, on main doors, a multi-point locking system and, on folding doors, shoot bolt locks. If your doors don’t feature locks of this type, someone could break into your home by smashing the window and so allowing themselves to entirely open the door.
ADDED VALUE
If you’re wondering if bifold doors will add value to your home, the answer is a definite “yes”! Bifold doors have become trendy features of homes. Buyers who see the doors when viewing your home could be impressed by how much sunlight they allow to enter the property. After all, this can save the homeowner much financial expenditure on electricity for their home’s lighting.
