Broken glass panel in front door

[Wrongsideofpennines]

My young children had an incident in the hall and one of them went through the glass panel in our internal front door. By some miracle they are all fine and no injuries. However we are wondering how best to replace the broken glass panel.

The door is likely original 1960s with a patterned sort of frosting. There are 4 rectangular panels in the door and then a 2 panelled full height glass panel next to it.

Should we:

• Replace with a single slightly odd panel that doesn't match and leave the rest?
• Replace all 4 panels in the door with a new pattern of frosted safety glass? (Including or leaving the window beside)
• Replace the whole door and window with a made to measure modern door?

Worried about losing the light in the hallway but also aware that the children were extremely lucky to have escaped without serious injury and how little impact it took to break it.

Did it break into sharp glass fragments, or blunt ones? Even safety glass can break if caught by a point, but the pieces should be different.

If it splintered into sharp bits, I would try and cost up either of the latter two options. (a whole door might be cheaper than trying to replace multiple panels)

If you need a short term option, you could cover up the panels at child height with painted plywood or similar, and leave the glass higher up maybe?

I'd replace the entire door, to be honest. It'll look a bit daft having mismatched glass and what's left there clearly isn't modern safety glass, so should be replaced anyway for obvious safety reasons.

My brother also put his head through a glass panel on our front door as a child, he didn't even have a scratch! It's a blooming miracle sometimes. But we were lucky and so were you, you wouldn't want to risk its happening again.

We wanted to keep our original doors, so we replaced all the glazing in the hall - double doors and two side panels - with a lightly frosted safety glass. It was not cheap, and it wasn’t easy to find someone to fit single glazing.

We are happy with it though.

If the original is not safety glass, I'd replace all the panels

It will probably be cheaper to just replace the door. If you want to keep the original door then I would replace all the panels.

@myopinionis it broke into large sharp spinters. We have covered the lower panels with plywood as an emergency measure but they're not particularly attractive and have needed to be both sides as we can't be sure we've got all the glass out of the frame.

@ShodAndShadySenators It was a head that went through it, and yes not a scratch on them. My husband of course injured himself in the clean up!

Thanks for all the responses. Its good to know there probably is an option to replace all the panels but we don't have any particular liking of the door other than the amount of light it let's in. But it's probably true that it's going to be cheaper to replace the whole thing if specialist glaciers are expensive.

I replaced glass in a door - 2 panels at the bottom was £200 incl labour to remove wood and insert glass.
You can buy safety film which might be worth looking at as a temporary measure.