French Doors near you

Two leaves meeting with no centre post give French doors their wide passage, and they also make a pair harder to seal and secure than a single door.

Indoors, French doors close off a room without closing it in. A home office behind glass stays bright and lets you keep an eye on children next door, and a dining room can be shut off from kitchen noise while still borrowing daylight. The trade-off is privacy and sound, so choose the glass for how the room will really be used.

An exterior pair has more edges to seal than a single entry door: the head and jambs, a sill under two leaves, and the vertical joint where the leaves meet. Natural Resources Canada's advice to weatherstrip the top and sides of the door frame applies to every one of those edges, and on a pair the meeting edge and the bottom corners are where cold air usually gets in.

A pair also moves with the seasons: wood swells and shrinks, and heavy glazed leaves can sag, so adjusting the hinges and strikes often restores a leaking seal before any part needs replacing.

With no centre post, the weak point of a pair is the passive leaf. If it is held only by small bolts, forcing the doors at the middle can push both leaves open at once. Securing French doors means locking the passive leaf firmly into the head and sill, then locking the active leaf into the frame and into its partner.

French doors are glazed almost to the floor, which is exactly what the building code's safety glass rules target. Article 9.6.1.4 of Part 9 of the National Building Code, as reproduced in provincial codes such as British Columbia's, calls for tempered, laminated or wired safety glass in an entrance door whose glass area is more than 0.5 m² and extends to within 900 mm of the bottom of the door. An exterior pair of full-glass leaves meets both conditions, and any replacement pane has to meet the same rule. Provinces adopt the code with their own amendments, so have the installer confirm the version that applies to your home.

Ask for safety glass in interior French doors too: low panes get bumped by children, pets and furniture, and tempered glass breaks into small granules while laminated glass stays in one piece. In Quebec, a contractor installing doors for others needs a licence from the Régie du bâtiment du Québec, where subclass 8.0 covers doors and windows.

Most French doors arrive prehung: both leaves hung in a frame with the sill, astragal and weatherstripping fitted at the factory. The job succeeds or fails on getting that frame plumb, level and square, because two leaves meeting in the middle show every error. A frame slightly out of square makes the leaves rub at the top or gap at the bottom.

A French door is mostly glass, so its glazing decides how warm it feels more than its frame does. Natural Resources Canada administers ENERGY STAR for doors as well as windows, and under version 5.0 of the Canadian specification a certified product must meet a U-factor or Energy Rating threshold and an air leakage limit. Ratings belong to a specific configuration, so compare the certified figures for the exact door, glass and grille options on each quote.