Energy efficient stable doors

Almost always for the same reason: you want the air without the opening.

• Children and pets. Open the top half and the bottom is still a barrier. A toddler cannot get out and a dog cannot follow you into the garden, and you still get a draught of air through the kitchen. This is the reason most stable doors are sold, and it is why they end up in family homes far more often than in stables.
• Cooking, steam and washing.  A kitchen or a utility room generates moisture and smells that a window over the sink does not shift fast enough. An open top half moves the volume of air a room like that actually needs.
• Wind and dirt stay out. With the bottom half closed, leaves, dust and whatever the wind is carrying off the path stop at the bottom rail instead of arriving in the hall.
• Talking to people at the door. Deliveries, neighbours, someone selling something. The bottom half stays between you and them.

This is the decision that changes both the daylight and the privacy, and the eleven layouts here cover the full range.

• Fully glazed. Glass in both halves, from two panes up to eight. The most daylight, and the option that turns a dark back hall into a room you can see in. Choose it where the door faces a private garden.
• Glazed top, panelled bottom. Panels below, glass above. The configuration most people land on, because it puts the light at eye level where it travels into the room and keeps a solid base that survives boots, bikes and the dog. We make it from one panel with one pane up to four panels with six.
• Fully panelled. Solid throughout, for privacy and for a frontage where a wall of glass would look wrong on an older building.
• Glazing bars are available in the glazed sections, in both halves. On a cottage or a farmhouse they are what makes the door read as period rather than new, and they pair with the same bar widths as our cottage windows.

Yes, and it is more common than it used to be, though the back door remains the traditional place for one.

A stable door works as a front door on a cottage, a farmhouse or a terrace with the door opening straight onto the street, where being able to answer with the bottom half closed is genuinely useful. On a period frontage it reads as original, because on many of those houses it was.

What to think about first: a front door faces the weather and the public, so specify the glass with the pavement in mind, and remember that a front door gets used far more than a back door, which puts more wear on two sets of hinges rather than one.

If the door is your main entrance, check the threshold detail and the drainage in front of it. A stable door sits in the same frame as any other door, but a main entrance takes the water.

• The kitchen. The room that most needs air moved through it, and the room where you are most often carrying something in both hands.
• The utility room or boot room. Wet coats, wet dogs, drying washing. An open top half does more for a room like that than any extractor.
• The back door onto a garden. The classic position. You can keep an eye on children in the garden with the bottom half shut, which is the whole point.
• A cottage or a farmhouse front door. Where the door opens onto a lane or a street and the bottom half is the barrier you actually want.
• A garden room or an outbuilding. A workshop, a studio or a store where ventilation matters more than heat.

A built-in vent is available on our stable doors, and it solves the problem the stable door itself does not.

The open top half is a summer answer. In January you want the door shut, and then a split door ventilates no better than a solid one. A vent in the frame lets air through with both halves closed and locked, which keeps the moisture from a kitchen or a utility room moving through the coldest months of the year.

It is worth specifying at the same time as the door. Adding ventilation to a fitted door afterwards means taking it out of the frame.

Measure the opening, not the old door. We build to frame size, which is the frame itself from outside edge to outside edge, and the frame has to fit the hole with a gap to seal.

Take the width in three places and the height in three places, and work from the smallest reading of each. Older openings, which is where most stable doors go, are rarely square.

Subtract 2 to 3 cm from the opening in both directions to get the frame size. That gap is what gets packed and sealed once the door is in.

One extra check for a stable door specifically: the floor. The bottom half swings independently, so a floor that rises towards the door, or a threshold that has been built up over the years, will catch the bottom leaf when the top is already clear.

Every door is made to measure, so the price depends on your opening. Enter the dimensions, choose the layout, the material, the glazing and the fittings, and the configurator prices it as you build, including VAT. Every layout on this page shows a starting price before you begin.

A stable door costs more than a single-leaf door of the same size, and the reason is straightforward: it is two leaves, two sets of hinges and a joint between them that has to be weathertight. The mechanism is the cost.

After that, glazing moves the price more than the panel count does.