Korniche bifold doors review – great for fitters

Manufactured by Made For Trade, Korniche bifold doors are modern doors predominantly designed to appeal to the trade buyer and installer and heavily marketed as such because of the way they are supplied, supported, and their simplified installation. Homeowners benefit from a reasonably priced folding sliding door for standard installations and where the highest features and specifications are not essential.

What are Korniche Bifold Doors

Korniche bifold doors are provided by Made for Trade to their customers. The product comes comes with insulated aluminium profiles with a powder-coated finish in a choice of standard colours. These are White RAL 9910 gloss, Grey RAL 7016 matt, Black RAL 9005 matt and dual colour with Grey 7016 outside and white 9910 inside. Of course, any of the standard RAL colours are available. 

Korniche is a latest generation bifolding door with a lot of fitter-friendly features and good styling, homeowners will find appealing. Despite the popularity of sliding doors for their larger glass sizes, fewer visible aluminium profiles and overall styling, there are still many credible reasons to consider a bifolding door and the Korniche is no exception. 

First of all is the way only a bifold can fold back and fully open up the available aperture, where sliding doors always take up half or two-thirds for the open panels to park.  The next great feature you only get with a bifold are the numerous configurations, also giving the functionality of using a bifold just like a single or set of French doors, for regular garden access, without folding the panels back every time.  

Another great feature of choosing a bifold over a sliding door, is that you can have standalone single or double doors made from exactly the same profiles – again something not possible when trying to match other doors to a sliding door.  

And finally, with many people using their patio doors to gain access into their homes, a bifold with a traffic door makes this possible.  Sliding doors with external key access are hard to come by. 

The design of Korniche Bifold Doors

The profile design in Korniche bifold doors is aesthetically pleasing, with a flatline appearance to the profile faces and a discreet curve to the top of the profile where it meets the glass, with the same styling to the glazing bead.  The styling of Korniche makes it very suitable for new or replacement door installations in modern houses and just as suitable for older properties. Whilst not the slimmest bifold door at the door mullions, with many slimmer doors available, Korniche does offer pleasing overall frame dimensions, although these can vary depending on the door configuration overall.

• 129mm using a standard frame and subcill
• 108mm using a sash profile without an outer frame and integrated cill
• 76mm top frame including the 20mm frame extender
• 96mm top frame where a trickle vent must be provided.

At the middle mullions, the Korniche bifold door comes in at 133mm, which places it within many of the mid-range brands, such as the standard Smart Systems Visofold sliding door, Aluk bifold and is quite a bit slimmer at the mullions than the Origin OB-72.  Given the maturity of the bifold door market presently, we would have preferred a slimmer dimension at the mullions, with many brands now offering 94mm to 120mm as slim folding sliding systems. 

Whilst you will find slimmer bifolds giving reduced mullion sightline, slightly bigger glass sizes and cleaner views as a result, overall, the Korniche is an attractive bifold door.  We’ve seen this product and tried it out several times since its introduction, and styling-wise, there is little not to like. And using the latest generation rollers and bifold door hardware, the sliding folding action is smooth and quiet.

Technical and Performance Standards

The full technical details are available from the manufacturer, but overall Korniche meets many standard requirements covering security, energy-efficiency and weather protection.  These include

• Security Tested to PAS 24:2016 enhanced security rated and BS 6375 compliant
• U-Values stated as 1.5Wm2K depending on the glass specification chosen
• Building Regulations Compliant.

For overall door and individual panel sizes, Korniche bifold doors will go up to seven panels with individual folding panels going up to 1250mm wide and up to 2500mm high, although you cannot have leaves done at both width and height maximums. 

Korniche door security

The Korniche bifold is tested to the latest security standards, similar to other well-designed and tested bifold doors. There are some nice touches provided for overall door security.  The multipoint lock is the quality Fuhr brand with an adjustable one-piece keep. It comes with five locking points which are normal for most bifolds, although Origin doors come with eight.  Take the doors over the maximum height for the lock and a further two locking points are added with shoot bolts.

Locking the doors involves the familiar lifting of the lever handle.  Securing the doors is via a Yale 3 start Kitemarked cylinder, with Yale keys, which is a nice reassuring touch for the end user customer.  The Yale brand is well known and several bifold brands still offer a lower-rated key cylinder instead of one with higher performance.  The locking handle on the intermediate panels is a good idea that appeals to end-user customers, although providing a locking facility at these handles is the exception rather than the norm, with most bifold system choosing not to provide one. 

Specify the doors with laminated glass and you get PAS24-compliant doors when also combined with the Yale 3-star cylinder.

U-Values and Energy Efficiency

U-Values are stated at 1.5Wm2K, but as with all doors and windows presently, the U-Values depend on the glass specification chosen, and any professional installer can advise on the ratings you can expect for your particular door set. But you should expect the Korniche bifold door to be Document L compliant with the newer requirements.

Fitting and Glazing Korniche Bifold Doors

The design and installation of Korniche is very much with the installer in mind.  Lots of bifold doors promise easy installation and glazing a bifold has never really been an issue with such a mature product.  The Korniche has clip-in internal glazing beads, designed for easy removal if required and does not need an the additional wedge gasket that forms part of the final glazing on established brands.  Installation time is substantially shorter as a result. 

Made For Trade provides the door pre-assembed and ready to glaze, (transport sizes permitting) and the outer frame comes in a very simple to assemble kit form if you don’t want a fully fabricated product.  What the company has also done which is a great idea for the first-time installer of Korniche is useful labelling on the product itself. These explain adjustment, glazing and other useful installation tips – not something we’ve seen on other brands. And making installation easier still, is the smart packaging for the accessories and other loose components, with a compartmentalised installation parts box. 

Alternatives to the Korniche Bifold Door

Korniche bifold doors are what we regard as a mid-range, trade-friendly product and with this in mind, the following brands can also be considered as comparable bifold doors. 

Alutech BF73

Trying to replicate the feature set of the premium Schüco ASS70 FD with near identical mullion sightlines and panel size capability is the Alutech BF73 bifold, which we have reviewed.  The BF73 is slimmer, goes wider and taller and offers similar security, weather performance and U-Values and is worth comparing with the Korniche and is widely available. 

Smart Systems Visofold

The tried and tested bifold comes with similar dimensions at the door mullions, although a new Visofold Slim model was launched in late 2021.  It offers similar specifications throughout and is widely available through many trade fabricators. 

Exlabesa Xlafold

A lesser-known bifold from a systems company that is quite well known in the commercial and specification market is Xlafold.  Again this comes with similar styling and frame sightlines, a similar handle offering and door panel size capability. 

Aluk Optio BSF70 bifold door

Another reliable and established bifold door, Aluk has similar styling but with the advantage of a heavy-duty model for commercial applications and can offer better overall acoustics and U-Values with the right glass specification and a triple glazed option. 

How much does a Korniche Bifold Door cost?

Widely available to the trade, prices for supply only range from approximately £500-600 per panel plus VAT unglazed. Homeowners can expect to pay in the region of £1300 -£1500 per panel, fitted including VAT, although prices do vary depending on location, the installer, profit margins etc. These approximate prices are based on a standard colour product.

Korniche Bifold Doors Review – what we think

The Korniche is a well-made bifold door from a reputable manufacturer, with good specifications.  However, it is not designed with the feature set of premium bifold brands that can also meet more demanding projects and installation types. And for quite a recently introduced product, there are a few omissions. 

It could have been made slimmer at the door mullions.  There is no fixed or open corner option, the door panel maximum heights do not go as tall as other brands. The handle styling is a little staid, given the sheer range of stylish bifold handles available on the market and more recenly in more appealing colours and even textures than the standard black, white, chrome and satin that is to be expected. There is no low threshold designed for accessibility such as the ramp-type, again something the more premium brands tend to include withing the options at the track/threshold.  At the time of writing this review there is no triple glazed option with only 28mm units available.  

That said, the locking system and Yale cylinders provide reassurance, the 120 degree rotation of the shootbolt handles is a nice touch as is the option to lock them. The door restrictor is an excellent addition and the door magnets are quite attractive and neat. 

Korniche bifold doors review – Conclusion

Many great trade manufactuers such as Made for Trade, do exactly as their name implies – create quality products that are designed with the trade installer firmly in mind.  Just like the excellent Korniche Lantern roof, Made for Trade have created a bifold that is remarkably easy to fit, great to adjust and fantastic to glaze. It is also a bifold brand that clearly suits the smaller installers well.  By that we mean the professional one-man installer or smaller local businesses selling products where top features and high specifications are as not as important as getting a pleasing, well-made bifold, properly fitted by a local reliable company.  

The modern flatline styling and feature set of the Korniche bifold door also lends itself to commercial installations, cafés, bars, office partitions and retail, but with no low threshold and the warranty excluding ‘commercial’ installations, we think Made for Trade are missing on the commercial bifold door opportunities this door could easily meet. 

This is a fit-for-purpose bifold door for standard installations and we see this as the main market for which Korniche was designed rather than appealing to the homeowner customer wanting more features, slimmer doors and a more capable bifold in terms of sizes, options, sightlines and customisation options. Extensively tested to 50,000 traffic door operations and 10,000 folding cycles, Korniche bifold doors, well made and fitted promises an affordable and reliable foldling sliding door manufactured by an established and reputable company.