Bespoke Timber Windows – What are the choices?

All of our products are bespoke: we don’t hold any physical stock, all units are made-to-measure – so that they fit perfectly in your openings – and many styling aspects can be chosen to suit exactly what you have in mind. There are sadly some real-world limitations, but we truly believe we can offer the perfect product for any style of home.

Modern or Traditional

One of the very first questions we ask helps us to understand the general feel of what the customer is looking to achieve. By knowing that a client is looking to create a home that aims to look either modern or traditional helps us to immediately narrow down the sort of window designs we should be discussing. The majority of traditional projects are aiming to blend in with the surrounding area, so it’s important that we take a look at the other houses nearby. On the other hand, modern projects tend to sway towards contemporary, clean and simplistic configurations with minimal fuss.

Our bespoke timber windows and bespoke alu-clad timber windows can be configured with either sharp 90 degree angles or a much softer 45 degree with a classic moulded timber design on the interior to suit either of these.

See more in our Oxfordshire High Performance Renovation gallery.

Handles

All our products have a standard set of handles that the manufacturer has specifically chosen to fit in with their product. However, we do understand that everyone’s taste differs. To help find the best aesthetic solution for everyone, the majority of our manufacturers offer alternative colour options. Furthermore, if you have a very specific style and colour handle in mind, feel free to send an image or a link to us.

As long as a window handle has the correct screw spacing and spindle size, it will work with most of our windows. For doors, the general rule is that the handle must be of the “rose” style (separated handle and lock). Again, the spindle size must be correct.

Also, the customer can choose to not have handles on the exterior of doors that will never need to be accessed from the outside. For most doors positioned upstairs, this option cleans up the exterior appearance.

Glazing Bars, Georgian Bars, Astragal Bars

Purely on paper, adding bars that break up a pane of glass should not be added. They are more expensive than most people anticipate and can block a surprising amount of light from entering the home. It doesn’t stack up well. However, they do have their place in terms of adding a particular style and look to a window.

Thanks to the flexibility of bespoke windows, adding glazing bars conservatively can create beautiful lines running through a property. Either across an elevation or between floors; bars can help to soften the appearance of larger windows. The most popular bars we offer are around 25mm thick – this helps to minimise the amount of light that is blocked. Also, we thoroughly recommend “plant on bars” rather than glass separating bars. These offer much better energy-efficiency than bars that separate the glass into individual panes.

On timber windows especially, we would normally be installing into an older-style property, which tend to have those bars included in great quantity. Removing them can drastically alter the house’s appearance, and this can upset everyone from your neighbours to the local council. If you’re unsure on this aspect, it’s always best to ask sooner rather than later.

If you go onto your County Council’s website, you will find a planning enquiry form. This will allow you to explain the changes you plan to make to your home and allow the council duty planning officer to inform if you need planning permission or not. Contact us if you need help on where to find this information. We recommend carrying out this simple exercise to ensure you have full compliance with planning regulations; it is the home-owner’s responsibility and critical.

See more in our Cotswold Countryside Window Renovation gallery.

See more in our Window and Door Upgrades for a Home near Banbury gallery.

Bespoke Timber Window Layouts and Configurations

This is where things start getting a little complicated, as there are so many rules for what can and can’t be created that we have a different estimating systems for each factory we work with. However, we can give you a good idea of what is possible for bespoke timber windows.

If we were to take a simple square window (let’s say 800mm x 800mm), this window could be a fixed pane; hinged on either the left or right; hinged at the top or hinged at the bottom.

Then, you can arrange these hinge-types in frame almost however you would like to. There are only two real limits. Maximum and minimum manufacturing sizes and we can’t have both inward and outward opening hinges within the same frame.

Door Layouts and Configurations

For our bespoke timber doors, there is so much flexibility. The most basic fully-glazed door can be split into almost any number of sections with some timber and others glazed. Alternatively, our panelled doors have a grooved design (both in and outside) with the option of cutting out an area to be glazed. A vertically-grooved door with a small square section to look through is quite popular. For timber and aluminium-timber double doors, the same rules apply.

Beyond that, we can create our Lacuna bifold doors up to 6m wide with a wide range of glazed door designs in each leaf. And we can position glazing bars within our sliding doors too.

Danish windows

Lacuna Bi-fold