Fixed frame windows

When the light matters more than the airflow. That is the whole decision, and it usually points to one of four places in a house.

A stairwell or a hallway, where nobody would ever reach the handle anyway. A gable or a high wall above a door, where the window is there to bring light down into the room. Beside a patio door or a tilt and turn window, where one pane opens and the rest is glass. Or a view you want uninterrupted, which is where the name picture window comes from.

The one place to be careful is a habitable room where the fixed window replaces the only opening window. That has ventilation consequences, and we cover them further down.

Bigger than an opening window of the same design, because there is no sash to carry the weight of the glass and no hinge to take the load.
If your opening is larger than a single pane allows, the answer is usually to split it with a mullion or a transom and keep the sightlines even, rather than to force one oversized unit.

Five options, and the choice is really about maintenance against appearance.

• uPVC is the standard here and the lowest maintenance of the five. It never needs painting, and beyond the plain white you can have one of 32 colour combinations, including six woodgrain finishes: swamp oak, mahogany, Winchester, walnut, golden oak and vintage oak. Those are applied as a foil, so the grain is on the surface rather than in the material.
• Pine is painted or glazed at our factory and can be repainted in any colour years later. It is the option to pick on a period property, and the one conservation officers tend to ask for.
• Meranti is a hardwood. It is denser than pine, which makes it the steadier choice on a large pane or an exposed elevation.
• Alu-clad pine and alu-clad meranti carry a 1 mm aluminium skin on the outside face. The timber stays timber on the inside, the weather never touches it, and you wash the frame with pH neutral soap a couple of times a year instead of repainting it.

A fixed pane does not have to be a single sheet of glass. You have four bar options, and they change both the look and the cleaning.

Bars at 27 mm or 47 mm are glued to the outside and the inside of the sealed unit. They give the divided look from both sides and read as a genuine grid from the street.

Georgian bars at 18 mm or 26 mm sit inside the sealed unit instead. Nothing interrupts the outer surface, so the glass wipes clean in one pass. On a fixed window that is worth more than usual, because a fixed pane often sits somewhere you cannot easily reach.

Because a fixed frame takes a thicker unit than an opening sash, this is the window type where the glass specification actually pays off.

• Acoustic glass. Three levels, two of them rated at 37 dB and 41 dB. A fixed window is the best carrier for this argument, because there is no opening joint for sound to leak through. On a road-facing elevation it is usually the reason people choose fixed over opening.
• Self-cleaning glass. Worth considering when the window sits high or somewhere a ladder will not reach, which is often exactly where fixed windows end up.
• Anti-fog glass. Reduces external condensation on the outer pane, the misting that appears on cold clear mornings and clears by mid-morning.
• Obscure and solar control. Three obscure patterns, cotswold, satinovo and crepi, plus solar control glazing for a south facing pane.

Double or triple glazing is available across the range.

Yes, for a simple reason: there is nothing to force. No handle, no lock mechanism and no hinge means there is no moving part to lever, and the glass is held in the frame rather than in a sash that can be pushed.

That is why fixed panes are a sensible choice at the back of a house, at ground level, or anywhere a window is out of sight from the street.

Every one is made to measure, so there is no list price. Yours is calculated from the size you enter, the layout, the material, the platform depth, the glazing, the bars and the finish.

The configurator prices it as you build it, including VAT, and updates with every option you change.

Two things move the price more than people expect. Acoustic and specialist glass is a bigger step than an extra pane, and going from uPVC to a hardwood or alu-clad frame changes the base more than any single option does.