Bi-fold Doors: Choosing the Perfect Layout for Your Home
Bi-fold doors are a great feature that you should consider adding to your home. Whether you are renovating your house or building a new one, bi-fold doors will offer you a larger opening, which is an excellent entrance and exit space into your garden and any other place where you install them. However, when choosing a bi-fold door system for your home, you will have to consider things such as the operating systems, glazing options, and the layout. The layout is important since it determines how well your bi-fold doors will deliver on their functionality. Therefore, when choosing a layout for the doors, here are a few guidelines to consider.
Inward and Outward Stacking Layout
The panes of the bi-fold doors can stack up inside or outside your house. When making the decision whether to have the panes stack outside or inside, consider the manner in which you want to utilise the space. If you want to maximise on your patio space, go for inward stacking of the bi-folds. In addition, if you live in an exposed area with a lot of rainy and windy action, an inward stacking layout would be your ideal choice. Nonetheless, this type of layout while allowing you to maximise on your patio space, limits the space around the doors, meaning you may not have as much usable space for your furniture.
On the other hand, if you'd rather have more usable space inside, then go for an outward stacking layout.
Number of Bi-fold Panels
Bi-fold doors are often supplied in standard sizes, which means that the shape as well as the size of the opening will determine the configuration of your doors and the number of panels you will require. However, the standard sizing may not be suitable for your home. For this reason, you can order for custom configurations of the panels to suit your needs.
Bi-Fold Door Styles
You can choose either multi-leaf or adaptable bi-fold doors. A multi-leaf bi-fold door layout will allow you to choose a more personalised configuration of your bi-fold doors. The leaves or door panes can be as few as two and as many as up to eight. If you go for fewer leaves, consider extended or large panels that will allow enough light as well as easier opening. On the other hand, more leaves allow you to alternate the level of openness to suit your needs.
For adaptable bi-folds, both the inward and outward layout can be configured into the door, giving you the versatility and functionality of both layouts.