Adrian Barraclough, Chairman of Quickslide, continues his Onsite with Ade series, this time revealing how you can make more with garden doors
As perennial as spring itself, the demand for opening up the family home into the garden will have the phones ringing off the hooks. There’s nothing quite like the promise of barbies and cocktails on the patio for exciting homeowners about opening up the rear of their homes with garden doors, with more styles and ideas than ever to loosen their purse strings.
Good old-fashioned sliders remain as popular as ever, with many homeowners now favouring the widest possible expanse of glass to give a wide, uncluttered vista all year round, rather than a maximum opening that, when closed, is full of frame. There are some incredible products out there now that offer maximum glass and minimum frame and homeowners sweeping the web will stumble across the most amazing panoramic doors. A cautionary note however: many manufacturers can produce super-wide doors, but transport and handling can present big problems. These things need serious thought.
Bi-folds continue to be big sellers and colour and woodgrain are now widely available for the frames. We like the super-slim Visofold 1000 that cuts the frame sightlines down to a minimum, whilst also offering a rather lovely woodgrain effect. These look as nice closed, as open, going some way to resolving the issue of frame visibility on bi-folds.
As the maximum opening that bi-folds offer continues to be a draw, a variation on this theme is the Indi-Fold folding/sliding door. These use individual, sliding leaves instead of the hinged versions on bi-folds which dramatically increases the flexibility of the doors as well as allowing furniture and pots to be positioned right up to the doors. Whereas bi-folds are pretty much open or closed, Indi-Fold doors allow the user to open one, or as many sections as the owner desires, with the leaves positioned anywhere along the track.
We are selling lots of aluminium heritage-style black ‘steel’ doors, both as French and bi-folds. These are a modern take on Victorian industrial-style doors distinguished by black mid-rails and can be matched with internal doors and room dividers to complete a look that is distinctive and very chic. And with modern thermal performance and easy maintenance too.
French doors remain highly popular, especially on period properties for which an emphasis on maintaining the original style is important. These look especially nice when flush sash windows have been chosen for the rest of the house, and the use of subtle colours are recommended to tone the frames down, on both PVC-U and aluminium profiles.
Finally, get your customers to think about integral blinds built into the sealed glass units. So many extensions and orangeries are built with large glass areas provided by windows and especially garden doors, with little thought given to heat-build up. Integral blinds work well as they stop most of the sun’s rays from passing through the glass and can simply be retracted out of sight when not required. So much nicer than adding blinds as an afterthought.
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