Every element of the exterior of a house serves an audience. The roof serves the sky and the street, but is not experienced by people from within the house. The windows allow in light and allow views of the external world, but are mostly evaluated from the outside of the home. The garden is used mainly from within the home, but is experienced from the pavement in front of it. The front door of a house is unique in that it has to serve two completely different audiences at the same time.
These two performances require different doors. The door that is designed to be used by one group of audience members is unlikely to meet the requirements of another group.
The street door is the focal point of the house’s facade. The colours, proportions, and style of the door tell the world a lot about the house’s character. If the door is wrong for the house, then the house is wrong for the world to see. For Windows and Doors Cardiff, visit choicetradeframes.co.uk/upvc-windows-doors/cardiff
Outside of the home, the door is performing a function of which the homeowner is completely unaware. It is the last thing the homeowner touches as they leave the home, and it is the first thing they encounter as they return. The homeowner may notice the quality of the door handle, the resistance of the door lock, the weight of the door, the sound of the door closing, the sealing of the door against the weather outside, and whether the homeowner feels safe within the home.
The experience of opening a door from the inside is largely invisible from the street and is generally overlooked in conversations between homeowners regarding the selection of their front door. While these considerations are important, they only represent half of the conversations that homeowners have regarding their front door.
The other half is how the door feels to live with every day. This is not how the door looks from a photograph but how the door feels from pulling it shut against the January wind at 7 a.m. in the morning and from locking it from the inside at 10 p.m. at night.
The best composite doors meet both of these audiences’ demands. They perform for the street with the visual authority that a focal point demands. And so they perform for the household with the mechanical quality, the solidity, and the reliability that daily use over years requires.
Both sides of the door matter. Only the best doors know it.
