How Secure Are Sliding Patio Doors?
Patio doors shed light on gloomy rooms and welcome natural views into the home. Their sweeping panes of glass take pride of place in modern domestic designs, but sometimes raise security concerns in their new owners. Just how secure are sliding patio doors? Can burglars just smash them and grab your possessions?
Well, apart from the obvious danger and noise involved in busting through tough double-glazing, well-designed aluminium patio doors offer a variety of strong, deterring security measures. Learning about these measures, as well as any additional steps to improve domestic security, helps sliding patio door owners rest assured in a safe and happy home.
Sliding Patio Doors Designed With Security in Mind
Secure Frames
While sliding patio doors introduce more glass into entryway design, they also introduce more frame. The resilient frame material in aluminium patio doors helps the entryway resist cracking or being forced open, and it is more robust than fragile materials like timber or uPVC.
Secure Glazing
When Hollywood bad guys punch through sheets of glazing, they’re usually helped by timed charges or sugar glass. Smashing through a double-glazed sliding patio door, however, wouldn’t be so sweet. The glass may be susceptible to extreme levels or blunt-force impact, but specialised glazing designs render patio windows strong and shatter-proof. To add an extra layer of defence, which also helps with thermal insulation and noise pollution, consider buying triple-glazed windows. Alternatively, laminated safety glass creates a clear yet near-impenetrable barrier in sliding patio doors.
Multi-Pin Locking Systems
As standard, many glazed door solutions come with pick-resistant multi-pin locks. These create an easy-to-use yet hard-to-pick safety lock that ensures you’re in charge of your sliding patio door.
Secured By Design
To promote high-security standards, British police developed an initiative called Secured By Design, or SBD. This accreditation ensures that all elements of a product’s design and manufacture stay reliably secure and form a firm line of defence against intruders. Secured By Design accreditation saw an 87 per cent reduction in burglaries with its products, so keep an eye out for SBD when buying sliding patio doors.
How to Improve Sliding Patio Door Security
While most glazed door designs are secure, they can offer a window into your home for unwanted opportunists. Alongside design measures, homeowners can add their own additional security to ramp up their home’s defences. However, the most effective option may simply be deterrence measures.
Deterrence Stickers
As most break-ins occur through spur-of-the-moment opportunism, a simple security sticker can keep you safe by giving a would-be burglar pause for thought. Stickers highlighting your door’s security measures, such as security glass or Secure By Design lock, may well avert a break-in by simply putting a criminal off. Stickers letting the world know that your home has a dog or alarm system to beware of also give your sliding patio doors an impressive fear-factor. On top of dissuading burglars, these stickers can also come in handy by preventing absent-minded residents from wandering into a closed glass door and hurting themselves.
Keeping Valuables Out of Sight
Much as you wouldn’t leave valuables visible on a car seat, some concerned sliding patio doors owners opt to hide valuables away from their glazing just in case. This creates a useful habit for general life, keeping important things safe and taking them with you wherever you go. However, with larger objects like stereo systems or consoles, this can become a cumbersome hassle. Other owners opt to obscure their windows during the night-time. This lets residents enjoy the view but blocks any outsiders from looking in.
Curtains, Blinds, and Privacy Film
Of course, curtains and blinds solve any problems raised by your sliding patio doors’ see-through quality. They ensure that valuable TVs and hardware stay for-your-eyes-only. One issue with large external glazing occurs when it’s dark outside and light inside, making it hard to see out and easy to see in.
Some owners solve this issue with blinds or curtains, but others choose a more hands-free option. Privacy film, or one-way security wrap, creates a layer on sliding patio doors akin to tinted windows on a vehicle. Highly effective at night-time, privacy film proves a popular product for easing any visibility and security fears.
Conclusions: How Secure are Sliding Doors?
Sliding doors, despite how easily light passes through them, create robust and obstacles between homes and the outside world. This effect increases when aided by modern, high-quality design and security measures. Deterrence measures lower the chances of break-ins even further still.
As mentioned, the majority of burglaries stem from opportunistic crimes when doors and windows are left open. A locked sliding patio door thereby prevents most break-ins. In that sense, sliding patio doors reliably maintain secure yet beautiful homes.
