What 'supplied and fitted' has to include
The phrase is used loosely across the trade, so it's worth nailing down. On our quotes, supplied and fitted means the whole job leaves nothing for you to arrange afterwards.
The two lines that most often turn out to be excluded elsewhere are disposal and making good. An old timber back door and frame is bulky, heavy waste. Making good means the plaster inside and the render or brickwork outside are left finished, not left as a ragged edge for your decorator.
- Survey and made-to-measure manufacture to your opening
- Removal of the existing door and frame
- Packing and fixing the new frame plumb and square
- Fitting, adjusting and testing the multi-point lock
- Sealing internally and externally
- Making good the reveal, inside and out
- Disposal of all old materials
- 10-year insurance-backed guarantee registered to your address
Choosing the style for a door you use every day
Back doors get more traffic than front doors in most houses. The style decision is really a decision about glass area, and glass area is a trade-off between light in a often-dark rear hallway or utility, and privacy from a garden that may be overlooked.
A full-glass back door floods a dark utility with light and is the right answer in a galley kitchen. A half-glass door is the sensible default for most rear entrances. A solid panel door with a small top light suits a side passage or an integral garage door where light isn't the point and security is.
| Style | Glass | Where it works |
|---|---|---|
| Full glass | Large single pane | Dark kitchens and utilities |
| Half glass | Upper half glazed | The default rear door |
| Midrail with two panes | Two smaller panes | Traditional look, more frame |
| Solid panel with top light | Small top pane only | Side passages, garage entries |
Glass choices for a rear elevation
Door glass is safety-critical by position, so it must be toughened or laminated. On a back door we usually recommend laminated: it holds together when struck rather than dropping out, which matters on the least visible door in the house.
For privacy, obscure glass is graded from lightly textured to almost opaque, and it's worth actually looking at samples rather than choosing from a name. If the door faces a neighbour's window, go higher up the scale than you think you need; if it faces a fence, don't waste the light.
Security where it actually matters
The rear of a house is where forced entry is attempted, because it's out of sight. Everything you'd want on a front door matters more here, not less.
That means a multi-point lock engaging with hooks and rollers into steel keeps, a reinforced outer frame so the keeps have something solid to bite into, hinge bolts so the door can't be lifted off if the hinges are attacked, and a TS007 three-star cylinder — or a one-star cylinder inside a two-star handle set, which is equally valid. Cylinder snapping remains one of the most common domestic attack methods and it's defeated by a component that costs very little.
- Multi-point lock with hooks and rollers into steel keeps
- Reinforced outer frame, not unreinforced uPVC
- Hinge bolts on the hinge side
- TS007 three-star cylinder, or one-star plus two-star handles
- Laminated glass rather than toughened, on a hidden elevation
- Internally beaded glazing, or security clips if externally beaded
Why the back door often outlives the front door — or doesn't
Back doors fail early for mechanical reasons rather than cosmetic ones. They're slammed, they're pulled shut with a hip while carrying shopping, and they take the brunt of wind on an open rear elevation.
That's why the frame fixing matters so much. A frame packed at every fixing point stays square; a frame foamed in flexes, and once it flexes the multi-point lock stops meeting its keeps cleanly. The symptom people describe is 'I have to lift the handle really hard now', and it's nearly always a fitting problem, not a lock problem.
Composite or uPVC on a back door?
Our honest view: on a sheltered rear door under a canopy, a properly specified uPVC door at £799 does the job a composite at £1,099 would do, and the extra spend goes further elsewhere in the house.
Where we would recommend composite for a back door is an exposed rear elevation with no shelter at all, a door that takes driving rain, or a household that wants the same look front and back. Both carry the same locking specification and the same 10-year insurance-backed guarantee, so the decision is genuinely about exposure and appearance, not about protection.
How the day runs
A back door swap is a half-day to one-day job. We take the old door and frame out, check the opening and the lintel, pack and fix the new frame, hang and adjust the door, seal inside and out, make good and clear away.
Before we leave you get shown how the multi-point lock is meant to feel, how to lubricate the hinges and keeps, and what to do if the door ever starts to stiffen — which on a properly fitted door usually means it wants a drop of oil, not a callout.
Cat flaps, pet doors and other things to decide before ordering
A back door is the door people want a cat flap in, and the time to decide is before manufacture, not afterwards. Cutting a hole in a finished door panel after the fact can compromise the panel, and on some doors it invalidates the product warranty outright.
Ordered in from the start, the aperture is formed properly and the panel is designed around it. The same applies to a letterplate on a side or rear entrance, a spy hole, or a keyed-alike arrangement so the front and back doors take the same key.
Keyed-alike is the one people most often wish they had asked for. It costs very little at the order stage and it is fiddly and more expensive to retrofit across two doors later.
- Cat flap or pet door — specify the aperture before manufacture
- Keyed-alike cylinders across front and back doors
- Handle style and finish, matched front to back if you care about it
- Which side the hinges go, based on how the room behind is laid out
- Whether the door opens in or out, and what it might foul outside
- Whether you need a low threshold for wheeled access to the garden
Hinge side and swing: the free decision people get wrong
Handing costs nothing at order and cannot be changed afterwards without a new frame, so it deserves two minutes of thought. Stand in the room and imagine carrying a full washing basket through the doorway.
The usual rule is to hinge the door so it opens back against the nearest wall rather than into the middle of the room, and so that the open leaf does not block a worktop, an appliance door or the route to the garden path. On a back door that opens outwards, check what is immediately outside — a bin, a downpipe, a water butt or a narrow path will all make life difficult daily.
Our surveyor will raise this, but you know the room better than we do. It is one of the few decisions where the homeowner's answer is nearly always the right one.
Get a back door price with nothing hidden
One number, everything included, in writing after a free survey. Call and we'll talk through style, glass and locking before anyone comes out.