I have both - French doors that open into my sunroom, then sliders that open from my sunroom onto my deck on one side, the patio on the other side. I have double sliders that open from our walkout basement to the screened-in porch. I prefer the sliders to the french doors because they don't take up any clearance space and they seal tighter in the winter. I had all french doors in my former house and they were drafty. I used them in this house in places where they wouldn't be exposed to the outside (great room to sunroom, main hallway to office)and because they gave me the same effect as a Nana wall at about 1/3 the price.

We have five sliders and five french doors (Pella)...and a lot of window washing! The french doors are all single doors and twp of the sliders are doubles (i.e., four panes of glass each). We live in the Sacramento area and enjoy bringing the outdoors in. The screen doors on the sliders are spring-loaded so they close behind you automatically, a very handy feature. Space wasn't a concern for us and we easily could have accommodated french doors throughout but for us the focus wasn't on the doors but rather on the view and the sliders are very unobtrusive in that respect. And although our home is an old-world Tuscan design, the sliders work just fine aesthetically. On the subject of window washing, we discovered the Mr. Clean AutoDry Car Washing system makes washing all those windows a breeze. It's a device that attaches to the hose and dispenses either soap or clear water. But it also dispenses de-ionized water for use in the final rinse so that windows can self-dry without spotting...a big time saver. No squeegeeing, no wiping and the windows are spotless! We wash the windows with a sponge mop, rinse with water and DI water and we're done. If you have divided light windows, it wouldn't be of much help but for large panes of glass, it's invaluable. Bob

Hi Telly, We did this research in '03 and it took 5 months to research various brands. You may want to also look into Loewen, a brand that we just saw recently at a friend's new house. They seem to do really good work. We had to decide on quality as well as looks. At the time, vinyl, fiberglass and other composite looked weird even when colored. The neatest look was Aluminum so we settled for Aluminum cladding and wood interior. Things may have changes since then. We compared extruded Aluminum versus rolled aluminum, how do they bake on the color and what type of protection do they use, how the cladding is mated to the wood interior, whether the wood is solid wood or veneer, locking mechanism, ability to adjust height and extension of operating units, quality of interior wood work, glass and wood options. Finally, we needed to know if they could do what we needed for our somwhat odd-ball opening. Pella offers Duracast and something called Impervia, some sort of composite material supposedly stronger than Aluminum. You have to go see in person how they look and whether they meet your requirements. Andersen also offers some sort of special glass coating and some kind of exterior cladding other than Aluminum. You need to see them and decide whether they work for you. If you decide to stain the wood, it will be important to look carefully at the wood work to see if the lines are appealing. Different companies have slightly different way of finishing the interior. If you intend to paint them, then that may not be so important. If you see a window showing poorly in one store, find the same window in another store. We saw an Andersen in one shop being shown with visible gaps in the woodwork and even frayed ends. We went to another shop and the demo window showed real well. The local Home Depot and Lowe's were just not good at all in showing Pella windows and doors. We had to go to a shop in another town. Nothing beats close-up touching and looking at the windows and doors in a good shop. We settled on Marvin becaus we prefer the Marvin woodwork quality but that is just our taste. Good luck.

Look for a PGT dealer. Simonton if you must but stay away from the box stores.