My french doors swing in. They look nice. It's not ideal regulating the amount of breeze coming in cause the wind will make it swing, but a heavy boot will block it. Yes, keeping a good coat of paint is called for.

There will be several 10' wide by 8' high french door sets in our new house. It's divided into 4 panels 25 feet each. The 2 panels at the ends are fixed and the middle 2 doors swing in. It's into our dining room and master and there is room for them to swing in.

In our old home we had a pair of sliders- I think they were 6' divided into 2 panel. It functioned just fine, but I cannot imagine a smaller opening. It was impossible to get furniture in through those doors.

I also prefer the look of french door to sliders.

What about a pair of 7'0"W French doors flanked by 18"W sidelights? Great look, larger opening, maximum light.

Spoke to several bi-folding firms. All say the saleswoman's information is not true -- they warrantee in that situation. Pricing for these is all over the place though. Anyone care to comment on quality of products from

Lanai
La Cantina
Sierra Pacific
Nanawall
Loewen

?

Reviving an older thread, but I would love to hear of any opinions on the above listed brands, especially for the SF Bay Area. We have a place for a 12 ft 4 panel accordion door, and need to start ordering soon!

We have a set of Marvin sliders -- 10', and, yes, the opening for the actual door is pretty narrow. I think the doors look great; the one cavet of sliders is window coverings -- total PITA. Our sliders are in our bedroom, so we need privacy. With sliders, you are VERY limited -- no shutters (unless you want to deal with having to fold them back everytime you want to go outside), roll down shades are a pain for the same reason as shutters. We went with curtains, and I think that look is pretty frumpy. Oh the things you don't think about until it's too late...

We're renovating a home that has great mountain views off the living room and dining area. The wall along that space is ideal for a 20' wide bi-fold door, so we're researching the different manufacturers now. I'd also like to hear from anyone with experience with folding window walls.

I have been looking at Nanawall BeyondLiftSlide doors - about $1000/foot but very cool. Check out their website.

I had 12' wide double sliders in my previous house. Loved them but kids were always getting confused about which one was open (would slam the open one, or tug on the closed one). When we had parties, I would lock one door and just use the other to avoid this. In the house we are building now, we went with a 10' outswing, flanked by fixed panels (the outswing doors "lay" right against the fixed panels). See link to video I uploaded to you tube, you can see these doors at about 45 seconds into the video. These are Marvin wood/ultrex and so far I REALLY like them.

Here is a link that might be useful: video of windows