French door: PVC or wood? Does PVC devalue a house?

[ParentOfOne]

We need to replace a French door, which leads from the living room to an external corridor / passage, which then leads to the back garden.

Would you spend about £2k more for a wooden door, or would you save that money and go for a PVC door?

I don't like PVC front doors, but I don't mind French doors and windows. So the question is not about aesthetics for us, but about whether / how much it would affect the perception of potential buyers. We are always told that PVC negatively affects the perception of many buyers; we don't plan on selling anytime soon, but you never know.

We never access the garden from there; we use the corridor for storage (BBQ, bicycles, etc) and we only open that door when we have to get the bikes.

The windows in the living room are made of wood, but the windows and French doors in the kitchen are PVC.

Thoughts?

Aluminium? It's slimmer and less cheap-looking than UPVC, but lower maintenance and probably cheaper than wood.

Does it get any sun? Doesn't sound like it from the way you've described but PVC doors can expand in the hot sun and then you can't always close them easily. Plus, the locks are notoriously easy to break.

@korawick12345

To me they all look dreadful, particularly when they haven't even put in the correct type of window for the age of the house

That’s what I mean about pragmatism.
There is no “correct type of window” round here.
People just get what they like the look of and can afford. Nobody cares about architectural correctness.
(Bear in mind houses like these are only worth c £200k, and naice wooden windows cost many thousands more than uPVC equivalent.)

I would ;love to have maintenance free upvc but I live in ye olde stone house and it would be a shame.

I hate upvc with a passion so it is a no from me.

I can't stand upvc and have all windows but we live in a house which would look awful with upvc. If it's a modern house it can look ok.

Wooden windows and doors would put me off. We had wooden patio doors in an old
Property and the breeze would lift the curtains at times. Replaced with UPVC as soon as we could afford to.

To add balance, if I was buying I'd be factoring in the cost of replacing the wood with uPVC.

I wouldn't want to mix wood, PVC and aluminium in the same house.

I think the conclusion we are reaching is to keep real wood windows on the front of the house, and to go with a combination of PVC and wood for the back.

I think keeping wood in the front is important because it affects the facade and the first impressions of a property.

Having PVC at the back is more of a compromise: some people will prefer it, some people will be put off, you can't make everyone happy.

Also, the house is worth about a million, and the cost of replacing PVC with wood can always be factored in an offer price. A wooden French door would cost about£4.5k vs £2-2.5k for UPVC; it wouldn't be very rational to not offer on a £1m house because of a door that costs £4k to replace. sets of bay windows overlooking the main road are already much more expensive, plus they affect the mostly irrational first impression of a house, so I'd be more keen on ensuring those are wood.

I think it is a shame to not just not do it properly for the period of the house. I think if I view a property especially in that price bracket I would expect that something recently replaced would have been done well. I think you can account for changes you need to make on an offer but why would you install something that you know might encourage an unnecessary downgrade in price. Because you pay £ 2k more now for wood or get more than 2k knocked off the offer to include building work, door, inconvenience etc. It seems a pointless exercise to try and avoid spending money now to lose more later.

@CaraherEIL

I think it is a shame to not just not do it properly for the period of the house. I think if I view a property especially in that price bracket I would expect that something recently replaced would have been done well. I think you can account for changes you need to make on an offer but why would you install something that you know might encourage an unnecessary downgrade in price. Because you pay £ 2k more now for wood or get more than 2k knocked off the offer to include building work, door, inconvenience etc. It seems a pointless exercise to try and avoid spending money now to lose more later.

This - given the price point of the house I don't think there will be many UPVC enthusiasts when you come to sell.

UPVC at the back of the house would put me off, yes. I would want to replace them if I were buying a new house. I think they look cheap.

The French windows we are replacing are at the back of the house.

Wood would look much nicer on my 1930s house but it has enormous windows and replacing the current upvc like for like will already cost a significant percentage of its just over 200k value. The cost of hardwood would be completely disproportionate. We also get quite a bit of Weather, here, so even with high quality seasoned hardwood, you couldn't drop the ball on the maintenance.

I think it depends on the period of the house and also the value. We’re replacing our very old plastic windows and French doors with wood shortly. When we bought the house, I thought it would be approx £30k. I’ve had 5 quotes and they’re all in the region of £50-55k. It’s extortionate, but will vastly improve the look of the house. In our case, the plastic windows are totally out of keeping with the house. The vendors made some really odd decisions about a number of things that we’re now changing.

@CaraherEIL , @korawick12345 , it's a bit more nuanced than that: it's not just that wood is more expensive now, it's also that wood requires a lot more maintenance, so more cost and more hassle along the way. Not to mention that, as the diversity of answers suggests, not everyone loves wood (but I do believe that, for this price range, it's probably more likely to find wood-lovers than PVC-lovers).

Also, I don't know if I have been unlucky, but I have had plenty of experiences of double-glazed wooden windows and doors which don't isolate well, whereas I have never had that issue with PVC.

When I look at a house and I see wood, my first thought is: "mm, it looks nice, but will it isolate well? Or will I have to spend loads to replace it?" - doubts which I do not have with PVC.
However, I do appreciate I am in the minority - I have come to terms with the fact that, in this country, a misguided sense of aesthetics tends to trump practical, not to mention environmental, considerations. I'll never forget the face of my German colleagues when they realised that not only is single glazing so common here, it is also the only option in many old / listed properties!

I don't like uPVC windows, but I have them as I live in Wales and almost everyone in my local area has them as far as I can tell - timber would take so much maintenance due to all the rain we get. I did get them designed to match the original wooden ones, though (which were completely rotten). I think they look OK.

There’s a posh window company near us, they only fit high end windows doors etc ( they don’t make them) . if you go in the showroom it’s very difficult to tell the difference between some of the wood/ pvc sliding sash windows. PVC has come along way since they first came out.

And also the wooden ones are pre painted ( sprayed) very smooth and they do look like they have a pvc finish to them 😀

PVC has come along way since they first came out.

It has indeed. A lot of the seals on our windows have gone now, and we are seriously thinking about just replacing all of our windows and doors. Our next door neighbour has just had his done and they look really nice.

Sarah Beeny went for Upvc sash windows on her very expensive new build...

And also the wooden ones are pre painted ( sprayed) very smooth and they do look like they have a pvc finish to them

I posted about disliking PVC but when I first went to see the windows we are buying I did comment on that exact fact. I think they are given something like 6 coats of paint and are indeed completely smooth. I had to ask if they were wood. I would also say that I haven't seen any very modern PVC windows so perhaps I'm being harsh.

The fake wood grain in a plastic door is a step too far though.

OP, have you had a quote from a small artisan joiner for your French doors. I think they might be a lot more competitive on price. They tend to price on wood and glazing separately and you source your own hardware. Or for that sort of budget you might get some stunning reclaimed stained glass French doors on eBay.

We have both aluminium and Upvc in this house. The Upvc are about to all come out and be changed but truth be told, the aluminium and the Upvc look exactly the same. So we know the aluminium are a “better” product, we know they feel more solid, the reality is that any visitor to the house probably thinks they’re just Upvc.

It’s tricky. There’s an awful lot of snobbery around it but that in itself means that wood has perceived value (even though actually they’re inferior in terms of draught proofing). I think this will change a bit now that there are so many paints for painting Upvc since you won’t be able to immediately spot the Upvc windows/doors on properties

We've just got aluminium throughout to replace steel because we couldn't get as thin a frame on uPVC or the same flush in-frame look. It literally cost x3 the cost of uPVC though so did need some serious thought.

Wood v uPVC would for me depend on the area and age of house. It probably matters very little on modern houses but would matter on a large old house in a cute village.

We have high quality wood windows and no issues. Upvc is not suitable for this house and I wouldn’t expect upvc French windows in a Victorian house worth £1m. We have windows and doors that actually are in keeping with the house. Our only different doors are the oak French windows in the oak framed kitchen. Other than that, painted windows everywhere. Many put in over 40 years ago by previous owner and still pristine. We maintain our house though!

There is no doubt that wood looks better, especially in a Victorian terrace.

However, my main issue is that I know nothing about wood, and I can't tell if a wood window will rot, will expand and get stuck, will be druaghty, etc. My experience with wood has been very mixed, from great to horrible, and I have no idea if it was just luck or if the bad experiences were due to poor quality wood, but could have been avoided with better products. UPVC is at least more consistent.

I had a look at our roads and the 4 roads around it; all Victorian terraces, but I'd say that more than half the houses have PVC for the front windows, with the rest being a combination of wood in good conditions, PVC with wood-like grain, and horribly rotten wood (which looks worse than PVC).