Patio and Sliding Doors in Ireland, Fitted by Registered Contractors

Sliding, Bifold or French: How to Actually Choose

The decision is usually made on looks and regretted on use, so it is worth thinking about how the opening will actually be lived with.

Sliding doors give the largest unbroken pane and take no floor space to operate, because the leaves pass each other rather than swinging. The trade off is that half the opening is always glass, so you never open the full width.

Bifolds stack right back and give you the whole opening, which is the point of them. They have more running gear than anything else on this page, more frame in the view when closed, and a threshold detail that has to be right.

French doors are the simplest and the least expensive, and on a modest opening they often look better than either alternative. They need clear floor space to swing into, which rules them out of a room where furniture sits close.

A useful test: how often will it actually stand open? If the answer is a handful of days a year, the sliding or French option is usually the better buy, because you are paying to look through it rather than walk through it.

The Opening: Why the Structure Decides the Price

Replacing an existing patio door like for like is a straightforward job. Making the opening bigger is a different piece of work entirely, and it is where the money goes.

A wider opening in a load bearing wall needs a lintel sized for the span and the load above it, and that calculation is not something to take on trust. On anything beyond a modest widening you want it engineered rather than estimated.

That work brings propping, making good inside and out, and often a floor finish that no longer meets the new threshold line. None of it is exotic, but all of it is cost that does not appear on a quote for the door alone.

Ask for the door and the builder work to be priced separately even where one contractor is doing both. Two clear numbers are far easier to compare against another quote than one combined figure.

Glass, Solar Gain and Overheating

A wall of glass changes how a room behaves. In Ireland the heating side of that is mostly welcome, but a large south or west facing opening can make a room uncomfortable on the handful of genuinely warm days.

Solar control coatings reduce how much heat comes through while keeping the light, and they cost little when specified at order. They are worth asking about on a big south facing opening and unnecessary on a north facing one.

Safety glazing is not optional. Glass in and beside a door has to be toughened or laminated, and laminated is the better choice at ground level because it holds together when broken rather than letting somebody through.

Triple glazing on a large opening adds real weight, which affects the running gear and how the door feels to move. The triple glazing guide works through where it earns its place and where it does not.