With so many products for the home bought online these days, is it really worth making the trip to see sliding doors in person when you’re planning your new home or extension? The answer is a resounding YES!
As it’s such a key decision, we think it’s really important to get up close and personal with your new doors. Not only that, many of our customers tell us their ‘eureka moment’ only came when they saw Minima’s slimline sliding doors in the flesh. You really need to see, feel and touch our huge glass doors to fully appreciate the wow factor they could bring to your project.
With that in mind, we chatted to Minima’s Sales Director, James Day, about what to expect when you visit their state-of-the-art Kent showroom…
Hopefully, you’ll be greeted with a big smile from myself or one of the team as you walk through the door! We pride ourselves on giving our customers a really warm welcome. We’ll make you an excellent cup of coffee and then crack on with showing you exactly what you can achieve with our award-winning sliding doors.
As well as demonstrating the doors in our lovely light and airy showroom, we will give you straightforward advice about how you can best use the product in your project. We often spend time going through your architectural drawings and making recommendations. We manufacture and fit sliding doors day in day out, so we really know what we’re talking about. Our customers tell us they love our approach and really value our advice.
There are two main things people are surprised about when they see our doors in the showroom. One is how big a 5.5 metre pane of glass actually looks in the flesh, and the other is just how easily our doors slide, despite their size and weight. A single panel can weigh more than a quarter of a ton, but it can still be moved with just a light touch of the finger tips.
We show our customers how the doors work, the different configurations of panels available, and how the minimal sightlines with our 20mm frames mean that the frames virtually disappear. Considering doors are typically kept closed for 95% of the year here in the UK because of the weather, it really is incredibly important to maximise that view! We also cover drainage solutions and different ways in which our door drainage can be incorporated into our customers’ design in the most elegant way possible.
Seeing the doors in the flesh also gives you the chance to check out the different colour options we have available. Our door frames come in an anodised brushed platinum as well as three different RAL colours in black and grey. We have samples available for you to take home so that you can easily see what your preferred option might look like against your home’s brickwork or render.
As soon as you walk into our Kent showroom you’ll see a really impressive floating corner on our room set. This effect is created via cantilevered steels above and it means that the corner appears to ‘float’, creating a wonderfully spacious feel. Lots of our customers get really excited when they see it and start talking about how they can incorporate it into their design. And if you combine a floating corner with pocket doors – which we also have on display at the showroom – you create that sense of entirely opening up the back of the house to the garden.
Our doors pass all the UK’s security regulations, including PAS 24 and Secured by Design. On top of that, when you visit our showroom you’ll be able to see how easy it is to operate our highly effective electric locking system. When activated via a switch on the wall or via smart phone, a stainless steel bolt concealed in the top of frame slides across to secure the door. With no visible handle or obvious locking point, there is no clear point of attack for a potential intruder, making Ultraline one of the most secure doors on the market.
And if you need to pop out but want to make sure you still have a good bit of air flow, our doors can be locked in a semi-open position with a ventilation gap of 100mm. These security measures are just one of the reasons why Ultraline won the Best Glazed Doors category in the 2019 Build It Awards and Highly Commended Door Supplier at the 2021 Homebuilding & Renovating Awards.
I think the main difference is the fact that we have large doors on display in our Kent showroom. Most of our competitors either don’t supply large doors or choose only to display smaller doors in their showrooms. We’ve gone big and that’s because many of our customers come to us specifically because they’re looking for larger door sizes.
The other thing that sets us apart is the time we spend getting to know our customers. We’ll set aside a dedicated hour slot for your visit and during that time it will only be you in the showroom which means that we can fully concentrate on your requirements. Many of our customers bring their architectural drawings with them (and even their architect and builder, too!) and we’ll lay the drawings out and really get to grips with their vision for the project. We know just how important your building project is to you and we want to help you achieve the best result possible.
Looking for inspiration? Take a look at our Projects page to see some of the impressive spaces we’ve helped our customers create.
Interested in taking a look at our award-winning sliding doors at our Kent showroom? Call or email us now to book an appointment.