The two dominant UK shopfront types
A walk down any UK high street shows the same two door types repeating. Aluminium-framed doors with single or double glazing dominate cafés, restaurants, smaller retail, professional services, and most office reception entrances. APG (all-purpose glass) doors — frameless, structural glass with concealed hardware — dominate premium retail, modern offices, hotels and high-spec commercial reception areas.
Both have well-defined fault profiles and well-established repair playbooks.
Aluminium-framed shopfront doors
The aluminium frame is the structural component. It carries the glazing (single or double pane), the hardware (closer, lock, hinges/pivots), and the perimeter seals. The frame is fixed into the building structure; the door blade swings within it.
Hardware vocabulary: bottom pivot (bears the door weight), top centre (upper pivot), transom closer (concealed in the head of the frame), hookbolt lock or mortice lock, strike plate on the frame, and perimeter seals around the door blade.
Common faults — drop (worn pivot), slow close (worn closer), slamming (closer leak or mis-set), failure to latch (lock body, strike, or closer pressure), seal failure (perimeter weather seal end-of-life).
Repair approach: component-level. Identify the failed part, replace with like-for-like, recalibrate, document. The frame, glass and structural elements stay in place. Most jobs are 1–4 hours.
APG (frameless) glass doors
APG doors look like a slab of glass — no frame, no visible hardware top or bottom. The glass is structural: typically 12 mm toughened safety glass, with patch fittings at top and bottom that grip the glass without piercing it. A floor spring sits in a recess under the door; a top patch engages a pivot in the head of the surround.
Hardware vocabulary: bottom patch fitting (engages the floor spring), top patch fitting (engages the head pivot), floor spring (replaces the transom closer of an aluminium door), concealed lock (usually in the bottom patch or floor channel), and the glass itself acting as both door blade and structural frame.
Common faults — patch fitting torque loosening (re-tighten in situ), floor spring wear (requires lifting the door for replacement), pivot wear at the top patch, glass edge damage (cannot be repaired, glass replacement required), concealed lock fault (replace the lock module).
Repair approach: same component-level discipline but more demanding. Floor spring replacement is a half-day job involving lifting the door clear. Glass replacement involves removing the patch fittings, lifting out the old glass, installing a new pane, refitting the hardware, recalibrating.
When the photo is enough to quote
For both door types, a photograph plus a 10-second video of the door operating is enough to quote in roughly 80–90% of cases. What we need to see:
- Wide shot of the door from inside, at rest, showing the frame and surroundings.
- Close-up of the closer or top patch (look up at the transom on aluminium, the head pivot housing on APG).
- Close-up of the lock area showing the hardware fitted.
- A 10-second video of the door closing from full open.
- A sentence describing the symptom and when it started.
Aluminium vs APG: the cost difference
Aluminium shopfront door repairs are typically £200–£900 depending on what failed. The hardware is widely available and mostly interchangeable across major UK brands.
APG door repairs run higher — typically £400–£2,500 — because the hardware is more specialised, the floor spring replacement is more involved than an overhead closer swap, and glass replacement on bespoke-sized panels carries 5–10 day lead times.
For new installations, APG is roughly 3–5× the cost of an equivalent aluminium door — but the premium is mostly upfront, with maintenance and repair cost over a 15-year life only modestly higher per visit.
Common faults across both types
Some faults appear on both aluminium and APG installations. Closer/floor spring leak (oil on the floor, door no longer closes properly), worn pivot (door drops out of alignment), damaged strike or hookbolt (door no longer latches), perimeter seal failure (less common on APG which often has no traditional seal, common on aluminium).
For these common faults, the diagnostic and repair logic is the same regardless of door type — just adjusted for the specific hardware fitted.
Maintenance frequency
Both door types benefit from six-monthly inspection on moderate-traffic installations, quarterly on high-traffic. APG doors benefit slightly more from regular hardware-torque checks because patch fittings sit under continuous load and their alignment is critical to glass structural integrity.