Composite vs UPVC Doors: Which Should You Choose?

Your front door plays several important roles – it provides you with access into your home, helps protect it from intrusion, enables post to be delivered and sets the tone for the overall styling of the house, or at least it should.

A shabby-looking front door won’t do your home any favours at all as it’s likely to prove a big turn-off for visitors and no house-proud homeowner likes the idea of their property begin criticised.

If your front entrance isn’t in the sort of shape it used to be it needs replacing and the logical replacement is either a composite door or UPVC door.

We are a big fan of both, hence why we supply and fit each door solution. You may find it difficult choosing between the two, so here’s an overview of how they fare in three significant areas:

Appearance

To give you a little bit of context first, a ‘composite’ door earns its name due to being manufactured from several materials, including wood and insulating foam, and it has a Glass Reinforced Plastic skin. The ‘UPVC’ stands for unplasticized polyvinyl chloride.

The use of wood in a composite door helps to make the door frame amazingly similar in appearance to a traditional timber door, but composite doors don’t need anywhere near the same amount of maintenance (no repainting, varnishing is required) as they’re weather-resistant.

A UPVC door is weather-resistant too but offers very different aesthetics to a composite door. It has a shiny surface that can nowadays be coated in various colours, not just a traditional black or white finish.

Cost

We should point out that the money you spend on a new UPVC or composite door will go a very long way as you can expect them to last for a minimum of 20 years.

Composite doors cost more than UPVC doors but that’s because an awful lot of craftsmanship goes into making them so strong. The resilience of a composite door is incomparable to any other door option as it cannot be beaten for strength and toughness.

Don’t think that inexpensiveness of a UPVC door compared to a composite door makes it an inferior product as it definitely isn’t. You can equally rely on it to improve security, improve thermal performance and improve aesthetics.  

Security

We just touched on home security and the addition of a composite door or UPVC will bolster it, leaving you feeling less edgy about leaving your house empty when heading to work or going on holiday.

Both doors have a very robust frame and multi-point locking mechanism affixed to them. When this locking system is engaged it is pretty much impossible to break and will ensure thieves walk away empty-handed.  

Put off making a decision until you have seen various composite and UPVC doors at our Frome showroom. We have one of the best door displays in the whole of Somerset.