Bifold or Sliding? Which type of door is best for your home?
If you want to improve your home and add value to your property, perhaps upgrading your doors would be a good place to start. When it comes to choosing your doors, safety and functionality are probably the two most important factors – however, an elegant and modern design is also usually essential to enhance your living space too
Bi-folding Doors and Sliding Doors can both be safe, practical and aesthetically pleasing. But which is the best choice for your property?
Below you will read some of the pros and cons of each door style to help you make up your mind.
The first, most obvious upside of bifolding doors is that they can open out completely, offering wider and clearer openings. If you tend to spend a lot of time in the garden and you want to make the most of it, bifolds are probably the most suitable choice for you. They make the indoor and outdoor spaces ‘one’ and can create larger useable areas of space.
One less obvious advantage of choosing bi-fold doors is that, contrary to what many people probably assume at first, is that by locking from multiple points, they provide even more security than sliding doors, which usually only lock from one point.
Lastly, another major benefit is that folding doors offer the ability to easily install blinds. Overall, bifolding doors are a great choice if you want to bring the outside into your home, while also being safe and practical.
Sliding Doors
While sliding doors do not open fully acrcoss their width, they do tend to be made up of larger panes of glass compared to bifolding doors. As a result, they offer maximum amount of light and wonderful views all year long when they are closed.
Moreover, sliding doors are the most space-saving doors, as they work within their existing framework without taking up any stacking space in your room or your garden. These characteristics of sliding doors, in addition to them being usually less expensive, make them a good option for most homes in the UK.
Sliding doors can be manufactured wtih very large panels, although you then need to install thicker panes of glass so that thye are strong enough to withstand wind loadings over a larger area. The thicker glass panes can be expensive and also much more difficult to handle and install – so sometimes large sliding panes can be impractical for a particular project. However sliding doors can give an impressive WOW factor when you capture uninterrupted views in your living space
