The Tri-State’s Most Common Door Questions

Material: The options are wood, aluminum, clad wood, vinyl or fiberglass, steel and Architectural bronze. These materials can be broken down further. For example, clad doors can be extruded aluminum clad, roll-formed aluminum clad, or vinyl/fiberglass clad. Aluminum, steel, and architectural bronze doors can be thermally broken or non-thermally broken.

It’s important to understand the distinction between every type of material in order to find the right doors for your home.

Style: Make sure you understand your home’s aesthetic – such as modern or traditional – and then you can determine which door style suits your design needs. There are countless styles ranging from contemporary to traditional. Next, determine the traffic flow within your home and how you intend to use each door in your everyday life. With proper blending, you can get a door package perfect for your needs.

Energy Efficiency: Some doors are designed to be thermally broken. That means they have a thermal barrier built within the frame that minimizes heat and cold transfer between the interior and exterior of your home. In short, they help keep conditioned air from escaping your home and minimize “sweating” on hot days. During the winter, the thermal break keeps warm air inside and prevents “frosting” on the interior of your doors.

Ease of Operation: Don’t forget that your door is supposed to be used. You’ll want to make sure that it swings or slides open and closed easily. We suggest visiting multiple local showrooms of various suppliers to operate real, life-sized doors before making any final decisions.

Every door brand we partner with has unique strengths. Look through our featured brands to view all your options and read about the advantages of different doors – or put us to the test and visit our showroom.

Aluminum clad wood doors have wooden frames and core components paired with an aluminum exterior shell. Aside from being aesthetically pleasing, the aluminum gives the door a low-maintenance exterior while preserving the warmth, charm, and character of a wood interior.

All wood exteriors need to be repainted every few years. This can end up being costly and potentially void your door warranty if not done. Extruded aluminum clad doors DON’T need this regular maintenance AND are also stronger and more durable than wood doors. You can expect an aluminum clad wood door to last for decades without warping, expanding, or becoming worn down by weather changes.

Visit our door gallery to see examples of aluminum clad wood doors.

French Doors: These hinged doors swing to the interior or exterior. Typically, they are a double-door configuration. They’re mostly glass, with divided-lites that coordinate with the home’s windowpane design. French doors are often found in traditional and historic homes. However, by utilizing a narrower stile and rail configuration to increase glass proportions, they can be adapted to modern, transitional and farmhouse designs.

Sliding Patio Doors: Sliders are the most versatile type of door – starting with the entry-level standard sliding patio door. They’re mainly built in two or four-panel configurations with a variety of options. Sliding patio doors are a great way to maximize standard openings and eliminate the need for “swing space,” making them the ideal patio doors.

Lift-and-Slide Doors: These doors are the upgraded version of the sliding patio door. Lift and slide doors can be bigger sizes and configurations to accommodate very large openings. To operate this slider, you rotate the handle 180 degrees which drops the roller wheels into the track, raising the door panels. This gives it the absolute smoothest sliding operation you can find. Based on your needs, lift and slide doors can stack multiple panels in a single direction or have bi-parting operation.

Multi-Slide Doors: Multiple stacking panels, huge openings, and the art of bringing the outside in are the hallmarks of this type of door.

Bi-Fold Doors: These doors are also known as accordion style doors because of the way they are hinged together for a folding type of operation. They give homeowners the ability to open very expansive spaces – similar to the Multislide door – but different in that they look more like French Doors when closed. Bi-fold doors slide on a track system but are hinged together, stacking on one side or both.

Balcony Doors: These doors are built for Juliet balconies. They swing into the home, so there’s no intrusion out onto the small exterior balcony. They typically lock with Cremone Bolt-style hardware on the interior side only. The balcony door looks like a rich historic window from yesteryear.

Pivot Doors: These doors use a pivot point hinge system that allows for large sizes and heavy weights. Pivot doors can fill large openings with just one panel and are often found in entryways of modern and contemporary homes. A properly designed pivot door will make an impression on anyone that operates it.

Visit our door gallery to see examples of these styles.

When selecting doors for your new home, it’s important to establish a budget. Monetary guidelines will narrow down your options and help you find the best doors for your new build. You can then focus on the material you’d like and the specific styles you want for your entry door and patio doors. Make sure to pay attention to things like energy efficiency, ease of use and traffic flow.

Several factors that will influence the final price of your door:

• Brand: Are you ordering a custom door from a high-end brand, or are you going with a more conventional manufacturer?
• Product line: Many commonly used manufacturers have premium product lines that are more expensive and other product lines that are less costly entry level type. Typically, they’ll market the premium lines so it’s important to understand the differences between the different product lines. Regardless of what you choose to go with, we suggest going to a local showroom to operate the product.
• Door Type: Even if they have the same size and specs, different door types will have varying price tags. For example, a French door will be more expensive than a sliding patio door, and a lift-and-slide door will cost even more than a French door.
• Material: Certain materials are more expensive than others. For example, an all wood door will be slightly less costly than an all-aluminum door. Steel doors are the most expensive doors – both thermally broken or non-thermally broken.

These are 5 great questions to ask your door supplier:

• What kind of warranty do my doors come with?
• Is there anything in my door package that can potentially void my warranty? (like no overhangs)
• How long will the whole process take from the initial quote until my door is installed?
• What are the production lead times for the door brands I’m looking at?
• Do you have a showroom where I can operate full-size doors?

The doors in your home can have a significant impact on your energy savings (and spending), as well as your home’s comfort level. Poorly insulated doors affect your home’s temperature in two ways.

Firstly, the air inside your home – whether heated in the winter or cooled in the summer – can leak out through your doors if they’re not designed for your climate. We see a lot of problems for customers who choose a manufacturer from the west coast – despite the high quality of their doors they are simply not built to withstand the brutal North East climate changes.

Secondly, the outdoor air will infiltrate your home through poorly insulated doors. A non-thermally broken door from California could be stunning, but it’s no match for the North East winters. The cold will transfer through the door components, making winters very uncomfortable inside your home.

We offer thermally broken aluminum doors from Ital Windows & Doors. Thermally broken doors are built with a barrier in the frame to minimize heat transfer between the interior and exterior of your home. The barrier prevents unwanted heat loss and gain.

Our after-sale service department is here to address any issues you might have with your door after it’s installed. We have great relationships with all the manufacturers we partner with, and we work with them to get the full extent of the warranty coverage for our customers.