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Entry doors are more than just an egress in and out of your home. A door is literally a hole in your wall. You want the most insulation you can get in that door to help your home’s energy efficiency. Window World Twin Cities is here to give you advice on what entry door material is the most insulative.

Some Thoughts About Insulation

You measure insulation using a scale we call  “r-value.” The higher the r-value, the more insulative quality you have against heat or cold. We can determine the r-value you need for your door by your location. Where we are in Minnesota, and our winters get quite cold, so we want the highest r-value we can get. One of our experts can consult with you to let you know the particulars about our doors and their r-values.

Types of Entry Door Materials

Entry doors can be made out of just about anything. Here are some of the more traditionally available types of entry door materials:

Wood. Wood has traditionally been used for entry doors. It can come in a variety of finishes, or you can paint it any color. There are two main problems with solid wood front doors: they do not have a very high r-value, and they have to be regularly maintained. Wooden doors also swell with moisture and shrink with drought or cold, making it hard to keep adequate weather-stripping for the season changes you experience.

Glass. When looking at glass doors, the first quality you need to address is whether the door is single pane or has multiple panes. Single pane glass doors have the lowest r-value of all the door options you can look at.  When you incorporate glass with another material like wood, fiberglass, or steel, it is the lowest r-value section of the door unless it has multiple panes with argon gas between the panes.

Steel. For many years, steel doors were the door you chose if you wanted high security. As with any other steel products, exterior steel doors can eventually rust and do require maintenance. Steel doors traditionally are foam filled and have a higher r-value than wood or glass. For many, the limited design choices available in steel doors coupled with the maintenance requirements make steel a poor exterior door choice.

Fiberglass. Fiberglass wins for the choice of the most insulative exterior door choice. While they fill a fiberglass door with foam much like a steel door, its low maintenance feature makes it superior to steel. Fiberglass also has an insulative quality, making fiberglass doors exceed steel door insulative properties.

Fiberglass can also mimic any siding finish like wood or steel, making it the most versatile choice for exterior doors. On our exterior doors, we have options of dual pane glass with argon gas between the panes. This makes the glass area of the door as insulative as the rest of the door.

Insulative Entry Doors from Window World Twin Cities

Let the experts at Windows World Twin Cities give you their recommendations for entry doors in the St. Paul area. We can do a free in-home consultation to recommend the best door for your application. You’ve got great new windows, why not get an insulative entry door to match? For more information, give us a call at 651-770-5570, or you can message us on our contact page.