Looking to upgrade your home or commercial space with the best internal doors or a room divider? When you choose the right internal doors, you get a significantly improved rooms, and doors play a key role in letting in light, better accessibility between your rooms and even create a focal feature. Aluminium, steel and wood are the most popular choices and each offers a different feature set, styling and other options. To choose the most suitable product for your project, we’ve put together a helpful guide explaining the pros and cons of each materials and why aluminium offers the best of all worlds when choosing the best internal doors, such as its slim sightlines and flexible design options and other advantages over steel or wood. Here is everything you need to know.
Why upgrade your internal doors?
Internal doors can frequently be ignored when remodelling or refurbishing a property, concentrating more on the interior decor, fixtures and fittings. For recently built properties, fitted with the original doors by the developer, these are regarded as fit for purpose, because they came with the property. However, internal doors are actually one of the more prominent building elements inside, after the floors, walls, ceilings and windows. You’ll already be considering colour schemes for your walls, you may already have changed your exterior windows and doors and also invested in the latest flooring. Upgrading your internal doors can create the finishing touch, not to mention improve your interior spaces overall.
Door style considerations for new internal doors
Remember that doors can contrast, enhance and create a prominent design feature, whether it is the style, size, colour or glass. You may wish to choose a style that complements any original features of your home such as original fireplaces, windows, staircases or flooring. Or you may be adding a contemporary kitchen where a modern door would work best. You may also consider how your interior decor including the doors works with your furniture, lighting and accessories.
Colour, texture and design may be other factors to consider. Perhaps you like the look and feel of the textured grain of a wood door and the warm to the touch feel.
Consider accessibility. If you are building new doorways, think about possibly making your doors wider, giving you more flexibility in the future for pushchairs, or wheelchairs as our housing and accessibility needs may change in the years to come. Aluminium offers some of the best internal doors for accessibility offering wider door sashes or an internal sliding door option for even wider openings.
What are the benefits of fully glazed internal doors?
One of the best internal doors types is the fully glazed option. Combined with a slimline frame, fully glazed doors take advantage of the light from both sides of the door.
Closed they let the available light flow between the rooms whilst provide the privacy required with clear or obscure glass. Fully glazed doors can also come with enhanced sound insulation when configured with acoustic glass.
Even when open, the transparency and minimalism of an aluminium glazed door, whether as one piece of glass or in the desirable grid-like pattern of the industrial, Art-Deco or steel look, creates a distinctive feature of the room without the bulk or solidity of a solid timber door. An all-glass design does create some of the best internal doors.
For smaller rooms in particular, the fully glazed design creates a more open aspect as well as nothing creates the open feel like glass.
Choosing the best internal doors – aluminium vs wood vs steel
Whether you choose aluminium, wood or steel, all these materials come at various price points and quality and some offer unique features and benefits. We’ve collated all the required information about aluminium, wood and steel internal doors.
There are some similarities between
Steel internal doors
Steel internal doors are often the most expensive options and at the top end of the market. The welded construction of steel doors usually promises the slimmest sightlines, although our own aluminium internal doors offer a near match to many of the standard sightlines.
You’ll find steel doors come at much longer lead times than other materials because of the more complex manufacturing such as the welded construction. However, for internal doors needing a fire rating, steel doors do come with a certified product depending on the level of fire protection your property requires.
Steel doors Pros
- The ultra-premium solution where budget is not a factor.
- The slimmest frames.
- Fire-rated option.
- Better for curved door sashes, arched or gothic.
Steel Doors Cons
- Usually the most expensive.
- Very long lead times.
- Older doors need specialist repair and maintenance.
- Heavier than other materials.
WOOD INTERNAL DOORS
There are many types of internal doors made of wood including off-the-shelf products. For the purposes of this comparison article, we are focusing on the more premium doors. The general advice, is the lighter the wood door the lesser quality it is likely to have, compared to the solid wood doors or those with an engineered timber inner core.
Wood doors Pros
- A great choice of fine woods.
- Best for decorative features like mouldings.
- Thicker doors mean more insulation
- Best for solid doors or panelled.
Wood Doors Cons
- Bigger sightlines than other doors.
- Thicker doors, more solid and heavier.
- Hollow doors can feel cheaper.
- Some styles go out of fashion.
aluminium internal doors
Aluminium provides some of the best internal doors options and are very on-trend right now. Moreover, aluminium internal doors offer arguably the best of all worlds when it comes to design, sizes, colour options, accessibility and functionality. Slim and strong, available in a range of styles and designs, the pleasing styling and sightlines of aluminium, combined with glass creates distinctive doors, either fully glazed, in the steel look, combined with side or top panels and many other design options. Even better, choose the right aluminium system and you can create a similar look outside with exterior-grade windows and doors giving a coherent appearance to the property.
Aluminium doors Pros
- Modern, industrial, heritage styling.
- Can look as slim as steel
- Wider and taller door sizes
- Matching exterior windows and doors
Aluminium Doors Cons
- No fire rated option unless commercial
- Less flexible than steel for gothic sashes
- Hard to obtain in wood effects
- Less ideal for doors with mouldings or panels
The best internal doors for dividing your rooms
Whilst it is possible to create doors acting as room dividers, aluminium offers a better, slimmer and more modern solution than wood. Of course, you benefit from the light transmission, made even better by the thin and sleek aluminium profiles and clear safety glass. With the best aluminium internal doors available made to order, it is possible to create virtually any style, size or design.
Larger rooms may benefit from a separate glazed zone, as a home office, play room or dining space. Hinged doors provide accessibility and functionality or sliding doors let you open up the doors whilst not taking up any of the internal space when open. And both door types come with no visible threshold, letting your flooring run clear and uninterrupted between the two spaces. Perfect for homes and offices, whilst adding the iconic steel-look that is timeless, desirable and visually appealing.
A well designed room divider in aluminium with matching glazed fixed panels, creates some of the best internal doors and screening configurations, providing exactly the right feeling of space, with privacy or separate zones when required.
Aluco internal doors with our exclusive floating lock design, are unique in the market in giving you the desirable styling of steel doors with the option of an all glass design. The same floating lock backplate, period handles and slimline steel-inspired profiles with the option of no glazing bars or a bespoke design, with the glazing bars positioned exactly as you need them.
Even more reasons why aluminium creates some of the best internal doors
Cheaper than steel, slimmer than wood, lightweight and strong and offering classic heritage or more modern industrial and Scandi styling, aluminium offers many benefits when you are looking for the best internal doors for your property project.
Architectural quality aluminium combines with the best quality glass, for maximum transparency and an open feel. Even customised with on-trend reeded glass, aluminium internal doors are durable, easy to maintain, and offer matching glazed screens for other parts of your home. Aluco Aluminium expertly manufactures a range of one-off designs creating matching interior design features. We can create shower screens or partition screens, glazed doors with fixed panels to create a stylish storage area in the steel look, making the most of an unused alcove or space beneath a staircase.
Flexible, with virtually unlimited choices of colour and finished off with gorgeous designer hardware, Aluco steel-inspired or contemporary styled enhances traditional or modern homes or commercial spaces with some of the best internal doors, room dividers and screening systems.
Instantly recognisable in the desirable black matt finish or in a choice of over 150 other colours, the Aluco Interior Collection, comes with meticulous attention to details, flawless product quality, hand finishing and expert installation. The best internal doors for your home, office or business premises, with an unmatched look, feel and quality. We are confident Aluco internal doors are the last doors you will ever buy.
