Contemporary Doors in Aluminium

Contemporary or modern front doors in aluminium offer a high quality solution for the home. They’re also available as heavy-duty commercial doors for apartment buildings and general high traffic use. There are many hundreds of door styles available for front doors. Composite doors as one example available in many combinations of colours, glass patterns and designs.  Look on any door brochure and you’ll see a choice of contemporary styles, traditional designs to mimic timber doors and others.

A choice of entrance doors in aluminium

Composite doors are a great value product and arguably the best selling type of door.  But what can you provide your customers if you want a contemporary front door in aluminium?

There are many reasons why you’d want to offer aluminium front doors.  First of all if you have a customer who has purchased aluminium windows and doors for their property what choices can you offer them for their front door?

A composite door may be fine, but you won’t get the colour match next to the aluminium windows, the frames are generally PVCu and even if coloured aren’t the same as the powder coated frames elsewhere.

Therefore in these situations and even where the customer simply doesn’t like or doesn’t want a composite door you should be able to offer alternatives.

Where can you purchase contemporary front doors?

As you do your research, you’ll come across dedicated door companies. Pirnar, Spitfire, Urban Front, RK Doors are just some where you can buy direct or via their dealer network.

Then there are those doors made by the companies behind them and then supplied via a dealer network. These dedicated manufacturers work hard to train their dealers and installers and provide all the technical, sales and marketing support required.

Besides these dedicated manufacturers, other more basic products are available an installer may provide. For instance, they’ll by a regular unglazed residential door in the same way you get a side or back door. Then instead of the glass, the installer fits a decorative panel.

Glasswin, Dutemann, GRP Designs, Origin, Aluprof, Duration or Hallmark are just some of the modern and contemporary aluminium doors. Additionally, most brands also come with more traditionally styled products. Our aluminium front doors section lists some of the best brands.

Differences in door design

A basic front door arrangement generally consists of a simple residential door system fitted with a panel. While it may be true, these doors do provide adequate solutions, they’re quite basic in their design. First of all, is the door panel itself. Specifically, these usually only come in a 28mm panel thickness. As a result they don’t come with the lower U-Values of thicker panelled doors.

Second is the look of these more basic products. Owing to the basic door plus panel design, you get more prominent sightlines. For instance, you’ll see the visible beads holding the panels in place. As well as this, some doors come with a picture frame detail (the Aluk door does this) and therefore an additional border around the door.

The better solution for contemporary doors remains the better-designed product with a flush and seamless look. You also get minimal frame borders, sightlines and protrusions.

The panel design of these doors is more complex. They’re thicker, have a longer step and give a more quality and luxurious look. Products such as these include Glasswin, Dutemann, Sunflex or Smart Systems.

Systems used with some contemporary doors

Who makes aluminium panels for doors?

Adeco is one company that manufactures premium quality aluminium decorative panels in a huge choice of styles.

These panels are made in Germany and Adeco is a long established and well known company in the field of steel and aluminium panels for doors.

Typically lead times are about four weeks but this is actually in line with the lead time on many coloured aluminium doors from your typical trade suppliers.

Hallmark are another company that can offer either a fully fabricated panel or a complete door and frame.

Indupanel in Spain is another very popular manufacture of door panels for aluminium doors.

Some factories whether in the UK or Europe also have their own machinery making standard or bespoke panels.

Other considerations with aluminium panels in doors.

Many contemporary front doors feature architectural hardware as part of their design. Handles such as full height pole handles, D Handles, Cranked Handles and other types all work together to give a modern door.

As the hardware is part of the door leaf and not part of the panel, this should not be an issue. Your systems company should be able to provide you with a variety of locking systems such as automatic locks, turn locks and other options if you have to move away from the traditional lever/lever handle arrangement.

What about colour matching?

As you may be buying your aluminium doors and aluminium panels from a different supplier, ensuring an exact colour match is essential.

Our advice is to establish which powder manufacturer your door and panel providers use. Examples include Syntha Pulvin, Interpon, Tiger Paints, Axalta and others.

It is tempting to assume that as long as the RAL colour is correct then so should be the colour. However there can be variations in even the same RAL colour from manufacturer to manufacturer.

If your doors and panels are painted by a Qualicoat Approved powder coater and the powder is from the same powder manufacturer, there should be no reason why the colour should not be an exact match.

The Alumina residential door is just one example of what is possible when you combine a good residential door system with flexible profiles, creating special designs.