Tell me about your composite doors please

[Neolara]

We want to buy a composite front door. I've now spent way too long looking online and am confused. I hoped MN may be able to help.

We have a traditional Victorian cottage with a small extension to form a modern entrance. We will be going for a modern look front door. However, most of the composite doors I've seen online seem to have UPVC frames. Do these look OK? Or do they look like UPVC? How solid are they? Also, lots of the doors seem to have laminate fronts. Do they look like painted wood? Or are they smooth? Or obviously plasticky?

Thanks.

We've just got one for our Victorian semi and love it

We originally wanted solid wood but the front of the house gets heavily weathered.

It looks great and not plasticy at all.

It's secure and well insulated and has helped block out a lot of sound from the front too.

We went with Rockdoor Ultimate for top level of security and insulation

Hi we were advised to go for a Rockdoor or Solidor, both top specification in terms of durability / security / design. We're in a 1930s semi so wanted something fairly traditional but not old fashioned if you see what I mean.

I've just had to check the surround as I didn't know what its made out of. It looks like wood, but ours is the same colour as the door (charcoal) so hard to tell. Think its probably the same material as the door. Ours isn't completely smooth if you look very closely, the surface is raised slightly to mimic the grain of the wood. It doesn't look plastic-y at all and it feels very solid (as you'd expect from Solidor !) which was the main driver for us (we'd been burgled). Not cheap but when we look back on all the expense of the extension we've had / purchases we've made, we both agree that the door was a good decision.

Watching with interest!

May I ask a cheeky question a would never ask in RL.... how much does a Rockdoor or Solidor cost?

We had a Rockdoor in our old house - looked like white painted wood with a grain.

yellow off the top of my head I think it was about £1200 but our builder fitted it so I think door + fitting might be more normally.

Thank you name change. It's one of those things I didn't have a clue what the cost would be, but it's more than I would have guessed. Unfortunately that's usually the case!

Our Rockford was £1300 fitted