What’s the Best Material for a Custom Front Door?

The front entrance to your home is a huge part of the first impression that your home gives guests. Getting a custom front door for your home is a great opportunity to maximize your home’s curb appeal, enhance your energy efficiency, and express your personal style.

Before you order a custom front door for your home, there are a few things you should know. While it would be great if you could just pick a good-looking front door and get it installed, there’s more to consider about your new doors than just its surface-level looks. 

You need to consider functionality, impact resistance, energy efficiency, long-term useful life, and more to find the perfect custom door.

Let’s start you off by assessing the different types of materials that can be used for front doors in Florida and discuss their pros and cons:

What Materials Are Most Often Used for a Custom Front Door?

A front door can be made from literally anything you can think of which can hold a consistent shape. Glass, aluminum, wood, steel, fiberglass… you name it, somebody out there has probably made a door out of it.

But, not all materials are created equally. Some are definitely more suitable than others for use as a front door material. The most common door materials include:

1: Glass 

French doors often incorporate huge glass panes that take up most of the door, creating a large, impressive-looking entryway. Laminated impact glass, when given a UV-reflective treatment to keep out the sun’s heat, can be a great fit for a front door.

Without a UV and IR-reflective film, glass has an inherent thermal conductivity (TC) of around 1.05 Watts per Meter Kelvin (W/m*K) Source: Engineering Toolbox. 

However, some homeowners don’t like to use large glass panes in their front doors, preferring privacy by only having a single small viewing pane or forgoing glass panes altogether for a minimalist peephole instead. While there are obscurity films and obscuring glass textures you can get, many prefer having no glass instead of heavily-obscured glass.

In Florida, any door glass needs to be impact-rated glass for appropriate hurricane protection.

2: Wood

Wood was, at one time, one of the most common materials used to make front doors. It’s still fairly common, as most hardwoods have good compressive strength to withstand impacts and great thermal insulation, which helps keep your home nice and cool even when it’s hot out.

According to the Engineering Toolbox, wood/timber can have thermal conductivity ratings varying from 0.12 W/m*K to 0.19 W/m*K depending on the type of wood used. Oak has a thermal conductivity of around 0.17 W/m*K

However, wood is not preferred for use in homes in Florida, especially along the coastline. That’s because wood is often highly susceptible to rot and moisture infiltration. If moisture gets into the wood of a door, it can seep deep inside and cause the door to bubble as it rots and swells from the inside.

Also, wood is susceptible to termites and other wood-eating pests. So, it’s generally not preferred in Florida.

3: Steel

Steel is a common choice for apartment complexes and high-security buildings where durability is more important than style or ease of use. Most formulations of steel have a massive compressive strength compared to wood, glass, or plastics, making it ideal for pure forced entry resistance.

However, steel doors tend to be very heavy and difficult to move compared to similarly-sized doors made of fiberglass or wood. Also, steel has a much higher thermal conductivity than fiberglass or wood does (though not nearly as bad as aluminum). Engineering Toolbox data shows that carbon steel has a TC that can vary from 36 to 54 W/m*K depending on the carbon content (more carbon = lower thermal conductivity). Meanwhile, type 304 stainless steel has a TC of 14.4 W/m*K. 

The biggest problem with steel doors in Florida, aside from their thermal performance, is that steel corrodes easily when exposed to salty sea breezes. While it likely won’t make a steel door fail as dramatically as a wooden one, the corrosion from moisture damage is unsightly and may impair the door’s operation depending on where it happens and how severe it is.

4: Aluminum

Typically lighter than steel doors and a popular choice for construction even in Florida. However, while the compressive strength of aluminum is high, there’s one big problem with aluminum: It has an extremely high thermal conductivity.

Aluminum, depending on the specific alloy, can have a thermal conductivity of 70 to 240 W/m*K, according to the Engineering Toolbox. The 70 TC rating is for aluminum bronze, which is typically used for things like seawater pumps and aerospace applications. The most common alloy used in residential applications like windows & doors is 6063 aluminum, which has a TC of ~200 W/m*K.

This means that heat passes easily through a slab of aluminum until the temperature on both sides of it reaches equilibrium (i.e., it’s as hot inside your home as it is outside).

So, on those hot summer days where temps crawl closer to 100 degrees, an aluminum door will transfer that heat right into your home like a radiator and won’t stop until your home reaches 100 degrees, too. There’s a good reason why aluminum is a popular material for baking sheets: it transfers heat smoothly and evenly while having a high melting temperature.

5: Fiberglass

This is now one of, if not the, most common door materials for homes in Florida today. Fiberglass has a good compressive strength, flexes with impacts to reduce the force transferred directly into the door, is lightweight, and is an excellent insulator. How good is it at insulating your home? Some sources estimate fiberglass to have a thermal conductivity of just 0.17 W/m*K, while others put it around 0.04 W/m*K. 

In other words, less than a thousandth the thermal conductivity of aluminum. So, if an aluminum door would let in 1,000 watts of thermal energy to your home, a fiberglass door would still be under a single watt of transferred heat.

However, the ultimate tensile and compressive strength of fiberglass is still below that of steel or structural-grade aluminum alloys.

Table of Door Material Properties:

*Glass has a thermal conductivity of 1.0-1.05 normally, while PVB laminate interlayer has a TC of 0.2, creating a total composite TC of around 0.9 (Source: Lecifilm).

**For the tempered glass itself (Source: Infinita Lab). Laminate interlayers may have variable compressive strength values that further enhance the glass’ overall performance.

***Measured parallel to the grain and varies by wood species. The lowest-performing wood was English elm, the highest was hickory (Source: Engineering Toolbox).

****Source: Stanford Advanced Materials.

*****For 6063 Aluminum used in windows (Source: Weldomachining).

******Crosswise vs lengthwise, figure converted from 15,000-30,000 psi (Source: United States Plastic Corp.).

So, What Is the BEST Material for a Custom Front Door?

In Florida, the best material for a front door is fiberglass. It has the best combination of thermal conductivity, compressive strength, affordability, and ease of use compared to the other options. 

Some materials may rival fiberglass’ thermal conductivity (like wood). Some offer better compressive strength (like steel). However, none of the other options provide the same mix of strength, impact tolerance, and corrosion resistance in the face of Florida’s frequent sea breezes.

Glass is another good option when you’re getting French impact doors, but fiberglass is far and away the most economical option for energy efficient front doors. 

If you’d like to learn more about custom front doors for your home, reach out to Karoly Windows & Doors! WE can get you started on your door replacement with a free in-home consultation with one of our installation experts!