What is a French Door? Where did it come from, aside from France obviously? The history of the French Door dates back as far as the 17th century when France was at war with Italy. A French Door is a light door that has glass panes that extend for most of its length. The original French Doors were constructed of individual, single-paned pieces of glass and wood…basically a window. This made it handy for spotting when your enemies were advancing! Today, while still functional, we’re happy to say French Doors are popular not as deterrents from marauding enemies, but more for their aesthetics!

At Timberland we make a wide variety of French Doors and, like all our products, most of them are variations on standard sizes and designs, custom-made for clients based on their individual tastes and requirements.

If you look on our website, you’ll see how vast our range is, and we’ve included a few more with this week’s blog to further entice you. Please go through our gallery and have a look; we’re sure it will spur your imagination.

Our basic French Door starts off with “cottage pane” glass sizes on the one hand and “open pane” glass sizes on the other, and there are all sorts of permutations in between, offering a wide variety of choice, limited only by our client’s creativity!

Very often our French Doors are accompanied by “sidelights” and/or “top-lights” above the doors, and the doors themselves may be in single or double in style. They are available in all timbers with which we work, including teak, cypress and mukwa.

The finish is also a matter of choice. Many of our clients choose to paint their French Doors, while others prefer to leave them “natural” to showcase the distinguishing grain of the wood.

Either way, we think they’re gorgeous, and hope you do too!