Bespoke Oak French Doors

Made to measure French doors, built to your opening

Bespoke French doors are the multi-pane layout, built here to the width and height of your opening rather than to a size held in stock. The design breaks the opening into several panes set in a solid oak frame, which is what lets a doorway carry daylight from one room into the next without giving up the door itself. Made to order means the layout can suit the room it is going into rather than the other way round, which matters in houses where the doorways were never built to a standard size.

What makes a door a French door

The defining feature is the number of openings in the face. Rather than one large pane or a solid panel, a French design carries several, divided by glazing bars that follow the proportions of the frame. That division is what keeps the door reading as part of the room instead of a sheet of glass in a hole, and it is why the layout works as comfortably in a Victorian house as in a new extension. Other layouts with an opening in the face are grouped in made to measure glazed oak doors.

Solid oak, cut to the figures you send

These are prime grade A solid oak doors, kiln dried before they are worked so the door holds its shape once it is hanging in a heated room. The frames are mortice and tenon jointed, with the panes set into the frame rather than pinned onto the face, and the stiles are deep enough to take a mortice lock and a pair of butt hinges. Where a knotty, reclaimed look is wanted, character grade oak is available on the same designs. Because it is oak all the way through rather than an oak face over a core, the grain and colour vary from one door to the next.

When a stock French door will not fit

Standard French doors are made to the sizes most houses need, and if yours is one of them a stock door will always be quicker. A custom size door earns its place when the opening sits outside that range: taller than the standard heights, wider than a stock width, or narrower than the smallest one made. Older houses are the usual reason, since doorways in anything Victorian or earlier predate standard sizes and rarely land on one. Trimming a stock door only goes so far before the lipping suffers and the pane proportions shift, so building to the figures is the cleaner answer.

• Several panes divided by glazing bars rather than a single large opening
• Glazing bars set out to the proportions of the door, not to a fixed pane size
• Panes set into a mortice and tenon jointed frame rather than pinned onto the face
• Stiles deep enough to take a mortice lock and a pair of butt hinges
• Prime grade A solid oak, with character grade where a knotty face suits the room

Matching the doors already in the house

A made to measure door is often the only way to run one design through a house where the doorways are not consistent. Because the bespoke designs mirror the families held in standard sizes, a French door built to an unusual opening can sit alongside stock doors of the same design elsewhere on the landing without the panel lines shifting. The rest of the range is in made to measure oak doors, and how the service works is covered on our made to measure doors page. If a standard size does fit after all, the stock French range is in french internal doors and will reach you a great deal sooner.