Materials affect the look, feel, and performance of your sliding door. They also determine the kind of maintenance you’ll be signing up for long term (though our doors are largely made of low-maintenance materials). Here’s a cheat sheet to the way we use materials:

Door and window installation is a specialty within the contracting field. Installation is crucial to helping these products reach the performance they were designed to achieve. This is why we generally advise working with a contractor. Unless you have experience in the field of construction, it’s best to leave install to a pro. The worst-case scenario would be investing in a high-quality new door and then not see the benefits from it, or worse, experiencing damage from water intrusion and discomfort from air leakage due to an improper installation. We can help you find a local-to-you installer who specializes in our product.

How to measure a sliding door

While we recommend working with a pro when it comes time to order and install your new sliding door, you might want to take a preliminary measurement in order to begin understanding pricing and comparing products from different manufacturers.

To do this, we recommend measuring your existing door’s height and width  at three different points and using the smallest measurement. We also recommend measuring corner to corner to understand if your door is in square, meaning corners are at 90 degrees. It’s not uncommon for a door to be out of square in an older home especially. If that’s the case, your contractor will know how to correct the problem and order the correct size door. 

For more details on taking this kind of measurement, you can follow the instructions in our article about how to measure doors.