After going through the same dilemma, we are so happy we went with bifolds. They open out the whole space whereas sliding doors still leave you with some glass (a doors width). Well worth the extra money. Of course if you only have a small opening then perhaps double opening french doors would be better than sliding doors.

What better way to spend a summers evening than enjoying the simple pleasures of a chilled drink while watching the last of the sun’s rays disappear behind the horizon? But what style glass doors would you choose?

I had hardwood bi-folds fitted last year and it took me ages to decide what to get. The reason I finally chose bi-folds was I use all my garden doors several times a day even in the winter and just opening the one section is easy and folds back neatly and doesn’t catch the wind as easily. There also have magnetic catches. And opening three sections is very neat and gives the biggest opening. However these openings are only two metres wide. Where I have a 2.4 opening I’ve got French windows and the 60cm doors fold back and hook onto the side windows well. Tbh bi-folds aren’t my favourite but they best suited the openings.

Hi Keswing, Although bifolding doors can give you a 95% width opening, they will be closed much of the time, and when they are, there are thicker and numerous sightlines blocking the view. Your short patio space will be restricted by the stacked doors too. You can of course have them opening and stacking inside the property, although this may cause similar problems of limiting space indoors. Your main exit door could be on the left or right depending on configuration and which side you want to stack the doors so this should not be an issue for you - why do you only have the option for a main door on the right? You could have two exit doors in the middle if you really wanted and the bifolding doors stack to either side, but the width is not really wide enough for this. A 3-panel sliding doors system, with all three panels sliding will give you the sliding door system with the biggest open gap, but will have two visible sightlines when closed. A 2-panel sliding doors sytem will provide the best view (as only one sightline in the middle of the doors will be visible when closed) but the openable width will only be 50%. Sliding doors with exceptionally slim sightlines, such as our VISION Ultra Slim Sliding Doors would be my recommendation :-)