Glass From the Rail Up
The Modern French is the most glass we put in a door. A grid of eight lites fills nearly the entire slab, sitting inside a slim painted frame with only a narrow bottom rail to stand on. There is no solid field, no brace, no panel. The door is a window that moves.
That is a structural claim as much as an aesthetic one. With this little wood in the frame, the corners have to be joined properly and the muntins have to do real work holding the assembly square. On a cheaply built version of this door you can watch the grid go out of parallel within a year.
Hung as a pair across a wide opening it does something no solid door can: it closes the room without closing it. Light, sightlines and a sense of space all carry straight through.
Design Details
Eight Lite Grid
Two columns of four panes filling the slab. The grid is the structure of the door, not a decoration applied over it.
Minimal Frame
Slim stiles and a narrow bottom rail. There is only as much wood here as the door needs to stand up, which is what makes it read modern rather than traditional.
Maximum Light Transfer
Nearly the whole face is glazed. This is the door for an interior room that has no window of its own.
Grid Continues Across the Pair
On a double opening the muntins align panel to panel, so the closed doors read as one sixteen pane wall.
Choosing Your Glass
This door is glazed and the choice defines it. Clear or lightly textured glass keeps the sightline through, which is the reason most people choose this door in the first place. Acid etched converts it into a privacy door and turns the grid into a graphic against a field of soft white. Rain gives vertical movement that runs against the horizontal muntins. Reamy adds a hand poured waviness that softens the strict grid. Aquatex pebbles the light and keeps shapes readable behind it. Select yours in the configurator above.
A Frame Doing Twice the Work
Remove the panel from a door and the frame inherits everything. Every corner joint on this door is carrying load that a solid slab would spread across its whole face. We cut and join these from solid wood in Pipersville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, square them before the glass ever goes in, and warranty the frame for as long as you own it.
Where This One Works Best
- Living room to sunroom
- Home offices
- Dining room openings
- Interior rooms without windows
- Studies and libraries
- Primary suite entries
- Playrooms
- Conservatories
- Stair landings
Made in the USA. Built to order in our Pipersville, Pennsylvania workshop, backed by our lifetime warranty, and shipped to your door free.
















