Unlike a door opening on the road, where the priority is privacy, any door that leads out into the garden needs to bring inside and outside together. The British climate being what it is, garden doors have to stay closed a fair amount of the time, so they should offer a broad view of the garden from the safety of the house. And, when the weather permits, they should allow movement between house and garden as if they weren't there.

Traditionally, french windows and sliding doors have answered this need up to a point, but both have limits. For a completely flexible solution, experts such as Sarah Beeny recommend bifold doors to connect inside to outside and make the whole area feel larger.

A Smooth Transition

Bifold doors can fold away to leave 90% of the available space open, offering a wide vista onto your garden and easy movement in and out. Real Homes Magazine recommends using a flush floor track and building up the patio so it's level with the internal floor, to make the transition unnoticeable. Of course, this has the potential to cause drainage problems, but an easy solution is to have the patio sloping very gently away from the doors.

Another thing that can help make inside and outside flow together seamlessly is to match the surfaces of the floor and the patio, such as using slate tiles for both. Alternatively, you shouldn't have difficulty getting a synthetic floor-covering that looks like the patio without having to tear up the floor. Choosing interior and garden furniture to match can also create a continuous feel and add to the "wow factor".

Variations

Ideas like this can work in most properties where there's room for a substantial opening onto the garden, but bifold doors can be incorporated to enhance the most specialised conversions. The Telegraph describes an ingenious conversion of a house from two bedrooms to six, including "cover[ing] the outside courtyard to turn it into a flexible everyday room with large bifold doors leading to the garden." The courtyard conversion in itself would blend inside and outside, with the bifold doors creating a smoother transition.

Match Your Home's Style

Bifold doors are extremely versatile, coming in a variety of styles and materials and ensuring there's something that will match the rest of your home's style. View a wide range of aluminium bifold doors at foldingdoors2u.co.uk, as well as timber and uPVC, so whatever your needs are, you can have bifold doors that bring the outside in for you.