Buying a new front door means lots of choice and, therefore, lots of questions.
- Is uPVC, aluminium or wood the best material?
- What makes a door properly secure?
- What kind of door keeps your home warm?
- Do doors live up to the saying “You get what you pay for”?
We want you to ensure you’re confident in choosing the right product, so in this guide we provide everything you need to know when choosing a front door and explain how we’ve designed our Residential Door with all these considerations in mind.
Front doors vary widely in price. What can I expect by buying at the lower end of the range?
As with anything you buy, how much you’re prepared to pay will dominate your thinking. But with doors, the cost shouldn’t be your main focus. A few moments’ research online will show you that there are lots of cheap doors on the market, however, resist the temptation to go for the absolute cheapest—low-price generally means low-quality.
Homes have doors to keep us safe and secure, provide warmth and protect us against the weather. And while all doors do this to some extent, a good-quality door will do it more efficiently, usually due to how they’ve been designed and the materials from which they’re made.
Low-quality doors can mean:
- Rainwater and draughts getting in because the door isn’t fully watertight
- Heat escaping and making your home colder and less energy efficient
- Wear and tear occurring much sooner
- Locks, handles, letterboxes etc. breaking and needing to be replaced
- Less security because lower-quality materials and components have been used
- Expansion and contraction effecting how easy the door is to open and close.
So it’s encouraged to always look to buy the best-quality door you can afford, as this will benefit you in every possible way, and look out for what guarantee is provided for all parts of your door.
What’s the best material for a front door?
If you’ve been doing some research, you’ll have found that front doors come in a range of materials; some more expensive than others and each with its own benefits and drawbacks. The table below summarises the pros and cons of the more commonly used materials.
| Material | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|
Wood |
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uPVC |
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Steel |
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Aluminium |
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At Origin, we use premium-grade aluminium, which is extremely strong and highly secure. It also provides great protection against the elements and won’t warp or rust. We’ve engineered our doors to last for a long time, which is why we feel confident in offering a 20-year guarantee.
What makes a front door secure?
A door’s security comes mainly from its lock. In the past, many homes had doors that used just a mortice lock, but these were found to be too easy for intruders to breach and gradually phased out (although some older homes still have them).
Modern front doors tend to be fitted with locking cylinders (the cylinder-shaped mechanism behind the keyhole) which are designed to comply with BS3621, the British Standard for ensuring locks are ‘thief-proof’. They also lock in several different points around the frame when you turn the key (and, with some models, lift the handle).
Not having these systems in place is likely to increase your premium when you come to arrange home/contents insurance.
At Origin, we equip all of our doors with these security features, and you’ll be able to choose which type of barrel and locking system you’d like. The innate strength of our premium-grade aluminium also goes a long way in creating a truly secure front door.
Barrels
We offer two types of barrels for our Residential Door, both of which have a 3-Star British Kitemark rating (the very highest rating). Our standard barrel has the typical pins and cuts that prevent the lock from being:
- snapped—applying force to the cylinder so it breaks
- picked—using picks to manipulate the locking mechanism
- drilled—drilling through the cylinder so the lock can be turned with another tool
- bumped—knocking the cylinder to make the locking pins jump and turn the lock
Our magnetic coded barrel provides an extra level of security in that, for the door to be unlocked, the key must raise the locking pins as normal and turn the magnetised rotors in the barrel.
Multipoint locking systems
These consist of additional security hooks and bolts and as you turn the key to lock the door (you don’t need to lift the handle), the lock rotates at the same time the hooks and latch enter their respective holes, bolting the door into the door frame.
Our locking systems use either five or eight locking points, depending on which type of door handle you choose. And, because we use automatic locking systems, you won’t have to worry about manually locking your door when you enter or leave your home.
Handles and hinges
The security of a front door can be compromised if the handle or hinges are damaged, worn, or of poor quality.
At Origin, we put our door handles through exhaustive cycle testing to ensure they’re strong and will stay that way for a long time. Our Residential Door also comes with hinges engineered specifically to withstand intruders
How does a front door keep warmth inside my home?
A good front door is airtight and prevents heat from escaping—and cold air from getting in—through narrow gaps between the door and frame or floor. Not every home has one, which is why some people have to turn their central heating on for longer and/or block the air flow with things like draught excluders and insulating tape.
We’ve designed our Residential Door to help make your home as energy efficient as it can be. Because we make our doors out of aluminium, which naturally conducts heat, we use a thermal break to stop the aluminium door drawing the warm air from your rooms. This thermal break is made of a high-strength plastic called ‘polyamide’ and sits inside the door profile—because it’s less conductive than the aluminium, it means less heat can escape.
How do you make a front door weatherproof?
To protect your home against driving rain and wind, a front door can be fitted with a weathered threshold (also called a ‘rebated’ threshold). The threshold is the track that runs across the foot of the doorway, and a weathered threshold has a small lip on one edge. When the seal on the bottom of the door presses against this lip, the door is weathertight and draughtproof.
You can see a drawing of a weathered threshold, including measurements, here.
How do you make a front door wheelchair accessible?
Where our weathered threshold is slightly raised to provide a weathertight seal, our non-weathered threshold is completely flat and level with the floor and not weather rated. We also offer an ultra-low mobility threshold, which stands at only 20mm when the door is open, making it ideal for wheelchair use and higher degree of weather rating that the low threshold.
One thing to bear in mind is that the low thresholds is recommended more for internal doors or doors enclosed inside a front porch, as they aren’t as effective at keeping water and wind at bay.
How do you make a front door soundproof?
Only the really high-end and very expensive front doors will be completely soundproof, but most well-made, thick, solid doors will cut out a lot of noise, providing they fit the doorway properly and are tightly sealed. Not having windows built into your front door also helps block out noise.
