Bifold doors - good or bad?

[KStreetpetal]

I’m not sure. Sometimes, when it’s sunny warm and you can open them up, they look great. Sometimes I think they look a bit dated. What do people think?

I love ours
Have got them on back and one side of extension so can open the whole room up the garden - fab for entertaining
Also just sitting on the sofa indoors reading, but opening the doors so I'm in the sun
It's a modern house though, 22 years old

by design bifold and sliding doors are less secure than normal opening out doors. but if security is not a big concern then I think they look quite nice

Look nice but open them fully only a handful of times per year. And as soon as you do every insect in a 100m radius is suddenly in your house.

French doors for me but I prefer a more traditional look, the thing with Bifolds if they are fully open and it’s a breezy day is all the garden debris would be blowing inside and I don’t actually like the look of a house that has no barrier between the house and garden, it feels too exposed and as if the back of the house is missing.

Oh yes and the insect/bird visitors.

I thinknit depends on how you live and what you want - we wanted to open up the whole space (4m) rather than (quite a large) proportion still closed off, even if we'd opted for sliders. Its really lovely having that inside/ outside thing going on. We also have them open all the time (we had them open for probably 4-5 hours on Saturday as it was warm here - NW), we're South West facing. Last year we opened them almost every day between April and late Sept but we do spend quite a bit of time in the garden.

I also didn't like the tracks on the floor for sliders, but they would have meant more glass / less frame than bi-folds.

Not sure I understand what posters mean about being able to open sliders a crack which you can't do with bifolds - we can, we just push two of the panels a tad to let a bit of air in.