Steel Vs. Fibreglass: The Great Door Debate

For our new home we need to replace most of our doors both inside and outside.  We've met with a number of different companies to look at the options available to us for our front door.  We decided right off the bat that wood was not going to happen.  Not only is is extremely expensive, but wood shrinks and swells according to the weather and we really wanted something that we didn't have to worry about.

The two options for us to choose between were steel and fibreglass.  I LOVE the look of fibreglass.

 You can get a number of wood grain finishes and stain it in a range of different colours.  These doors tend to be between $1000 to $2000 more in price than steel.  There are a lot of considerations when you are looking at fibreglass apart from the cost.  If you have a standard size door frame, this is a great option.  You also need to find out if the door company you are working with will stain this for you or if you or your contractor have to do this.

We have a unique opening for our front door.  It is oversize both in height and width.  The best solution for this space is to do a double door with two side lights (two windows, one on each side of the doors). If we were to go with fibreglass, we would loose some of the height we currently have as the door company would need to fill in to fit a standard size door.

We have been going back and forth over this for four weeks now and have finally decided to go with a double steel door for a number of reasons.

1.  Cost - because we are doing a double door, going with fibreglass would have added between $2000-$3000 more to our cost
2. Space - We really wanted to keep the height that a steel door would allow us to have.  The more light that comes in the better I always say.
3. Because we are going with a 3/4 panel glass door (see above) there would really not have much of the wood grain showing which really did not justify the huge increase in our costs
4.  The door cannot be seen clearly from the street due to a large tree in our front yard

So, after much debate we have decided to go with steel.  Our doors would have the executive panel as seen below but instead of the panel on the upper half, this would be clear glass.

Now we just have to figure out what colour to go with.