Different Styles of Bifold Door Systems

Growing in popularity thanks to their clean, contemporary look and their ease of use, there are plenty of reasons to want to install bifold doors in your home. However, they are not a one-size-fits-all solution. There’s a lot of variation between the different types of bifold doors available. Highly customizable, you can select different numbers of panels, different opening points, and much more. Here, we are going to look at some of the most popular styles of bifold doors to help you find a little inspiration for your own choice.

Concertina

At a minimum, bifold doors require two panels. These two-panel doors are known as “concertina” doors. While rarer compared to doors with three-or-more panels, they are the easiest and cheapest to fit, often used to separate different rooms in the home, such as providing a clean, low maintenance door to an en-suite bathroom.

Multi-panel doors

Most bifold doors fit in this category, with three-to-seven panels of uniform size opening from a single point. Most multi-panel doors open either from the right or from the left, leaving the whole length and height of the doorframe exposed while the different panels fold and stack on top of one another neatly at the end. When the doors are fully opened, magnetic catches hold them together, ensuring that they’re not swinging freely and keeping their profile size to a minimum. This makes them highly popular choices for patio doors that allow you to open the whole home to the fresh air.

Access doors

Multi-panel doors that all open from one side are a common choice, but some prefer to have a little more versatility. For instance, you might want to simply open one panel if you need quick access to the outdoors or between rooms, instead of having to open and fold the whole system. Access doors use a panel that operates, locks, and unlocks independently from the rest of the panels. In a four-panel system, this might mean that you have three panels that open and fold together to the right, while the last panel on the left can remain closed, or it can open while the other three panels remain closed. It requires a little more work and cost to install an access door but, to many, the versatility is worth it.

All the options you need

Bespoke bifold door design allows you to select a number of configurations depending on your needs. For instance, the DeWall aluminium bifold door system allows for up-to-seven panels that open in any way you please, whether it’s an access door, having two sets of panels open from the middle, or otherwise. The height and width of the panels are customizable, so how many panels you need to fill a space is up to you to a certain degree.

Think about your needs, the space you want the doors to fill, and what functionality they have to have. Do you want the simplicity of a single-opening for one set of panels or an access door to allow quicker movement? Do you need two panels or more? Take a look through the website to see what else goes into choosing a bifold system or get in touch if you want to learn more about fitting your own.