If you have a patio, you have easy access to the outdoors, but you don’t want the outdoors to have easy access to your home. The difference between a patio and merely a wall of windows is that you can go outside from there onto a porch or balcony, or enjoy the view equally well inside. That means you need a door that can serve as not just a portal, but a view. What kind of patio door works best for you?

Different Patio Door Options

The main difference in patio doors is whether they are hinged - like most doors - or sliding. Hinged doors are the regular kind that opens inward or outward. Your front door, back door, side door - nearly any kind of door is just like this, and a patio door is no different. But it could be. Patios are where sliding doors are more commonly used, doors that slide along a track that allows the door to move along with the wall, leaving no obstructions in your way.

A door serves many purposes, the most common one being to allow access into a home, but not at all times. Doors are only as good as their locks, and what locks can there be in a sliding door? Sliding doors in fact have very good security measures, featuring multi-point locks. They are designed not to be pushed open and are locked into their tracks above and below, and can be fastened by bolts going vertically into the top and bottom of the track as an extra measure of security. The glass can also be reinforced or designed with high impacts from heavy weather in mind. You get to see through it and know that nothing can pass through it.

Sliding Patio Doors

The simple standard of the sliding patio door is something that has been in use for a very long time in architecture. These doors open with a simple pull to the side and can be designed to disappear into a wall, overlap onto another immobile glass pane, or can open individually in opposite directions for an extra-wide entrance and exit to the home. Sliding patio doors are made up primarily of glass to allow you the widest view to see through when inside. The frames can be made of the same material as any other door. Wood, vinyl, fiberglass, and even metal - all make good frames for different reasons and are ideal for different conditions. Consider the kind of weather you most often see outside your patio to know what kind of glass fits best on your doors. This doesn’t just apply to sliding doors, but all door types for a patio renovation.

Hinged and French Patio Doors

If you want to go for something a little classical and traditional, you can get a simple hinge patio door. It will look like a regular back door into the home, which will of course lead to the patio. If that’s a little too boring for you and you want the experience of stepping outside to be more opening and thrilling, add a second hinge door on the opposite side and you can get French doors. These are doors that open together, twice as wide, and meet in the middle where they latch together. They can be made of any common material like wood, vinyl, or even metal, but it’s the glass that you’ll appreciate the most.

Bi-fold Patio Doors

Combining the best of all worlds, multi-slide patio doors open outward and glide along a track. They fold in the middle from where they open up, like a closet door or accordion, but is made of glass and other frameworks, they are still very secure. These doors can be installed in a number of unique ways, allowing for a degree of customization. For example, all the doors can open in one direction, or in the same direction, allowing you to fold each section of the door out one by one into a neat pile at the end where they all stay together. Or you can have one regular hinged door and the rest of the wall made up of these slide-and-fold panels so you can have your entrance be as wide or as narrow as you want. You get a wide-open view but also as wide of a way in as you need, so the good days can come in and the bad days can stay out.

Multi-Slide Patio Doors

When you slide a regular sliding door, it just goes into one place and stays there until you need to close it again. With a multi-sliding door arrangement, you slide one door, then another, then another, like you’re pushing playing cards together into a stack. When every single door is open, they take up the same width as a single door and are all in one place. These arrangements can be as wide as you like, from three or four to up to ten doors long, turning a patio wall into a sort of showroom opening act where the curtains are made of tested, security-conscious glass. These doors open in a certain order, so if one is locked, the rest stay where they are, and can even interlock from the outside so they can only be opened from within.

Choosing the Best Patio Door

There are a number of factors to consider before picking the style of patio door that works best for you. Budget is an obvious one, the style of the house you wish the door to match, and the general usefulness you want to get out of it. If all you need is a simple way in and out of your patio, a simple sliding door will suffice. But you can always think bigger. Do you want a pretty and refined bi-fold door? A classic, elegantly designed French door? A sleek and modern multi-slide door? You’ll be looking at it for a long time once it’s in. Make it a view you can appreciate when it’s open or closed.