6 Reasons You'll Thank Yourself for Picking Sliding Doors Instead of Bi-Fold Doors

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Bi-fold and sliding doors are a great way to combine the visibility of floor to ceiling windows with the entrance and exiting points of a door. That said, there are plenty of reasons why you'll be glad you opted for sliding doors over bi-fold, and here are just four.

1. Less Framework

The main benefit of choosing sliding doors over bi-fold doors is that the former offer far superior visibility. Using one or two large panes of glass instead of lots of separate leafs means that you'll enjoy unobstructed outward views from your property. With bi-fold doors, there'll be a lot more framework in the way.

2. Fewer Maintenance Worries

Cleaning sliding doors is a lot easier than cleaning bi-fold doors since you don't have to work your way around all those frames. Additionally, bi-fold doors have more moving parts, which makes it more likely that certain parts will break.

3. Covers Larger Areas

Bi-fold doors aren't generally recommended when you need to cover a wider area – over larger spaces, they tend to look a little out of place, and the folding mechanism becomes more vulnerable to warping. Sliding doors are ideal for covering larger areas – you just need to use three or four sections instead of the normal one or two.

4. Easily Accommodate Curtains and Blinds

One thing that people commonly fail to consider when it comes to bi-fold doors is that they are extremely annoying to use with blinds and curtains. You'll almost certainly want either blinds or curtains to block out light and ensure privacy, but they won't line up with bi-fold doors very well, tending to get knocked around or trapped when the door sections are concertinaed together. This isn't an issue that you're going to have to face with sliding doors.  

5. Less Obtrusive

Bi-fold doors need to bunch together when they are folded, while sliding doors don't take up any great amount of space since one pane simply slides up against the other. If you don't have very much outside space, or if you simply prefer to keep the property looking tidy and uncluttered, bi-fold doors aren't going to prove your best bet.

6. Less Expensive

Finally, sliding doors are a lot less expensive than bi-fold doors. Due to the larger number of sections required, bi-fold doors are expensive to manufacture and expensive to fit. If you need to work within quite a tight budget, that can be reason enough to switch from bi-fold doors to sliding. 

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16 May 2017

How a Window Brings Joy

Hello, my name is Sandra. I live in Western Australia with my husband and our two kids. I wanted to start a new blog so I could talk about windows and the joy they can bring into a person's life. I didn't fully understand or appreciate windows until we moved into our current home. It is a large place with plenty of windows. When I first stepped through the front door, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The light was amazing and the view made me want to cry. Having so many windows to look after has meant that I have had to learn a lot about maintaining them. I hope you enjoy my blog!