Two panel
One fixed, one sliding
The standard opening. One panel parks behind the other, giving you half the wall.
Home / Lift-and-slide doors
Doors
Lift-and-slide.
And the door you come home through.
Turn the handle and the whole panel lifts a few millimetres clear of its track — a hundred and eighty kilos of glass moving under one hand. Let go and it drops onto a continuous perimeter gasket and seals like a window. A patio slider drags along its seal for thirty years. This one doesn't touch it.
Why a slider goes stiff and this does not
Every conventional patio slider is a compromise you can feel by year five. The panel rides on its weatherstripping, so the seal is being abraded every single time the door moves. Tighten the seal and the door gets heavy. Loosen it and the door gets draughty. There is no setting that gives you both.
A lift-and-slide breaks the compromise mechanically. In motion, the panel is lifted off the seal entirely and rolls on hardware. At rest, it is pressed down onto the seal with the full weight of the panel behind it. Frictionless when open, airtight when shut, and nothing wears.
Configurations
Three panel
Two sliding, one fixed
Two thirds of the wall opens. The most common specification on a rear extension.
Sliding into the wall
The panel disappears entirely into a wall cavity. No frame, no post, nothing but the opening. It has to be designed in at framing, not added later.
Entry systems
The front door has to do two things that pull hard against each other: it has to be the most secure element in the building envelope, and it has to be one of the tightest.
Most North American entry doors solve one and quietly abandon the other. A steel skin over a foam core will stop a shoulder and leak air at the threshold all winter. A beautiful timber door will do the reverse.
A European entry system does both, and it does it the same way the windows do — with a multi-point lock that throws bolts into the frame at the top, middle and bottom, closing the leaf evenly onto a full perimeter gasket, over a thermally broken threshold that isn't a cold bridge straight through your floor.
Common questions
What is a lift-and-slide door?
Turning the handle raises the entire panel a few millimetres clear of the track, so it glides on rollers with almost no friction. Releasing the handle drops it back down onto a continuous perimeter gasket. A conventional patio slider drags along its seal permanently, which is why sliders get stiff and draughty with age and lift-and-slides do not.
How big can a lift-and-slide panel be?
Panels of three metres in height are routine and the mechanism is rated well beyond typical residential glass weights. The real constraints are the structural opening, the crane or vacuum-lift access on install day, and the wind load. We check all three before quoting.
Is a lift-and-slide better than a bi-fold?
Different jobs. A bi-fold opens the entire wall but leaves a stack of panels in the corner and has a seal at every fold. A lift-and-slide gives you one enormous pane of uninterrupted glass, a far better seal, and a far quieter door — but one panel always stays put. If the view matters most, lift-and-slide. If the full opening matters most, bi-fold.
Do you make entry doors?
Yes. Multi-point locking, a thermally broken threshold, and an insulated leaf substantially thicker than a standard North American door. It is the only door in the house that has to be airtight and unbreakable simultaneously, and it is the one most builders under-spend on.
Book a site measure.
We measure every opening ourselves. No estimator, no salesperson, no pressure — the person who measures is the person who installs.
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