How to Pick a Double Door Patio Door for a Rental

The Door That Was Three Inches Too Wide

I bought the wrong double door patio door last October. Not the wrong brand. Not the wrong color. The wrong size. I had measured the rough opening at the back of my Brooklyn rental twice, and both times I had measured from the outside of the brick mould rather than from the inside of the jamb, and the brick mould was an inch and a half wider than the jamb on each side, which meant the door I had ordered was three inches too wide for the space it was supposed to fill. The delivery driver left it in the lobby in the cardboard, and the door sat there for nine days while I figured out what to do, and the lobby smelled like particle board for nine days while the door sat there, and the neighbor on the second floor started asking me when I was going to move it because the lobby smelled like particle board. The door was three inches too wide. The error cost me $340 in restocking fees, three weeks of waiting for the right door, and a relationship with the lobby that is less clean than it was before I tried to fix the sliding glass door that was the reason I started this whole thing in the first place.

The Door That Was Failing in 3 Ways at Once

The reason I started this whole thing was that the sliding glass door in my living room, which had been there since the building was built in 1962, had begun to fail in three ways at once. The first was that the lock, which was a simple latch-and-bolt mechanism that engaged when you pushed the door closed, no longer engaged when you pushed the door closed, because the door had sagged about a quarter inch on the hinge side and the latch no longer lined up with the strike plate. The second was that the seal along the bottom of the door, which was a foam strip that had been replaced by the previous tenant in 2019 and that I had been told by the super would last five years, had not lasted five years and was letting in a draft that I could feel from the couch when the wind came off the harbor. The third was that the screen door, which was a separate panel on the outside of the sliding glass door, had come off its track in the spring and I had not put it back on its track because I was not sure how it came off its track in the first place, and the apartment had been without a screen door for six months, which meant that every fly in Brooklyn had access to my living room from the back of the building.

The Landlord's Two-Sentence Reply and the 1978 Install

I told my landlord, in an email I sent on a Sunday morning in late August, that the door was failing in three ways and that I would like to either have the super fix it or to be told that I could replace it myself. I mentioned the New York State warranty of habitability, which the email helpfully cited. The landlord replied on Tuesday morning, in two sentences, that the super did not fix doors, that I could replace the door if I wanted, that I should pick something "good for the building," and that the cost would be deducted from my security deposit at the end of my lease rather than from my monthly rent. I read the email twice. The first time I read it I was annoyed. The second time I read it I understood that the landlord was telling me, in the only language New York City landlords speak, that I had three months to pick a door and that the door I picked was going to be my decision and my problem and my deposit at the end of the lease.

The super, when I told him I was going to replace the door myself, asked me one question, which was whether I was going to keep the original swing frame, which is the metal or wood frame that is bolted to the rough opening and that the door panels hang from. The original swing frame in my apartment was installed in 1978 by a super who was no longer at the building and who had bolted it to the brick with lag screws that were an inch and a quarter long, which is the right length for a 1962 brick wall and the wrong length for a 1978 concrete patch that the landlord had poured over the brick the year before. The lag screws had been holding for forty-eight years on nothing but rust and friction, and they were not going to hold another door. The new frame I ordered came with two-and-a-half-inch lag screws that bit into the brick instead of the patch, and the super told me, when he saw the screws, that whoever sold me the frame knew what they were doing and that the next tenant was going to thank me for the screws. He also told me, in the same conversation, that the original 1978 install was the reason the door had been sagging a quarter inch a year, because the screws had been holding the frame at the wrong angle since 1978.

What Most Articles About Picking a Patio Door Get Wrong

I am telling you this because the question of how to pick a double door patio door is not the question most articles, or how to videos, are going to answer for you. Most articles are going to assume you are an owner, not a renter, and they are going to talk about R-values and U-factors and the difference between a French door and a sliding glass door in the language of someone who is going to live with the decision for the next twenty years. Most articles are going to assume you are replacing a door that was installed correctly, not a door that was installed by the super of a 1962 building who did not know what he was doing in 1978 and who is not available for questions in 2026. Most articles are going to assume you have a budget that starts at $1,500 and goes up, not a budget that is being deducted from a security deposit that is also being deducted from by the apartment you have lived in for four years and that you are going to need every dollar of when you move out.

The 4 Decisions That Actually Matter, in the Order They Matter

The four things that actually mattered when I was picking the door, in the order they actually mattered, were the rough opening measurement, the swing direction, the glass type, and the cost. The rough opening measurement is the dimension of the hole in the wall that the door sits in, and it is the dimension that determines whether the door you order is going to fit in the wall or sit in the lobby for nine days while you figure out what to do. The swing direction is the direction the door opens, which sounds obvious until you order a door that opens onto a railing or onto a neighbor's patio or onto a fire escape, and the metal on the door hits the metal on the railing and you are back to the lobby for nine more days. The glass type is whether the door is single pane, double pane, or low-e coated, and the difference between single pane and low-e is the difference between a drafty door and a door that does not let the wind come off the harbor into your living room. The cost is the cost, and the cost is going to come out of your deposit, and the cost is going to be the reason you pick a $1,400 door rather than a $2,800 door even though the $2,800 door is the one the salesperson is going to say is good for the building.

Measure the Rough Opening from the Jamb, Twice

The rough opening is the measurement you take twice. The first time you take it, you measure the height at the left side, the height at the right side, the width at the top, and the width at the bottom. The second time you take it, you measure the height at the center, the height at the second inch from the left, the height at the second inch from the right, the width at the center, and the width at the second inch from the top. You write all of those measurements down on a piece of paper, and you take the smallest measurement of each dimension, and you subtract a quarter inch from the width and a quarter inch from the height, and that is the size of the door you order. The reason you subtract the quarter inch is that the door needs a gap, the gap gets filled with shims, the shims get covered with trim, and the trim is what makes the door look like it was installed correctly even if it was not installed correctly. If you measure from the brick mould rather than from the jamb, which is the mistake I made, your door is going to be three inches too wide and you are going to lose $340 and three weeks and a relationship with the lobby. Picking a door that fits starts with measuring from the jamb, not the brick mould. Measure from the jamb. Write it down. Measure again.

Pick a Sliding Glass Door, Not a French Door

The swing direction is the decision you make before you order, and the decision you make before you order is the decision you live with for the next ten years of your lease and the next twenty years of the next tenant's lease. The door can swing in or swing out. The door can swing left or swing right. The door can be a French door, which is two doors that open from the center, or a sliding glass door, which is one door that slides behind the other. For a renter in a pre-war Brooklyn building with a small patio, the answer is almost always a sliding glass door, and the reason is that a French door requires clearance on both sides of the opening for the swing, and most apartments in Brooklyn do not have clearance on both sides of the opening for the swing. Sliding glass doors do not require clearance. They slide behind themselves. They are the door that the building was built with, and they are the door that is going to be the easiest to replace and the easiest to sell back to the landlord at the end of the lease, because the landlord is going to know what a sliding glass door looks like in a 1962 building. When the phrase double door patio door comes up at Home Depot, it almost always means French doors, which are two panels that open from the center. The same phrase online often means sliding glass doors with two panels, one fixed and one sliding. Know which one you are buying before you drive to the store.

Double Pane Glass and the $1,400 Door You Can Afford to Lose

The glass type is the decision that is going to determine whether the wind comes off the harbor or does not come off the harbor. Single pane glass is what was in the door that was failing in three ways. Double pane glass is what is in the door that replaced it, and double pane glass is what you want if you are replacing a door that is more than ten years old. Low-e coated glass is what you want if you are replacing a door that faces west, because low-e is what reflects the heat back out of the apartment in the summer and keeps the heat in the apartment in the winter. The cost difference between single pane and double pane is about $300. The cost difference between double pane and low-e is about $400. The cost difference between low-e and a $2,800 door with low-e and a built-in blind between the panes is about $1,000, and the $1,000 is not a difference you are going to get back from the landlord at the end of your lease, because the landlord is going to look at the door and see a door and not a $1,000 difference. Picking a door that holds heat starts with choosing double pane over single pane, even when the salesperson tries to talk you out of it.

The cost is the last decision and the most important, and the cost is going to come out of your deposit, and the deposit is going to come out of your move-out budget, and the move-out budget is the budget that you have been saving for four years for the day that the landlord decides that the door you picked is not the door the landlord would have picked. The door I picked was a $1,400 sliding glass door with double pane glass and no low-e and no built-in blind, because the $1,400 was the most I was willing to lose on the door if the landlord decided at the end of my lease that the door was not good for the building. The door that the salesperson tried to sell me was a $2,800 door with low-e and a built-in blind and a 20-year warranty that I was never going to use, because I am not going to be in this apartment in 20 years. The $1,400 door is going to last the four years I have left on my lease, and it is going to last the four years the next tenant has on the next lease, and it is going to be a door that the next tenant is going to look at and say "this is a good door." That is the door I picked. That is the door the landlord is going to see. That is what $1,400 buys in a 1962 building in Brooklyn.

If your rental patio door is failing in three ways at once, the short version is this. Measure the rough opening from the inside of the jamb, not the outside of the brick mould. Pick a sliding glass door unless you have clearance on both sides of the opening for a swing. Pick double pane glass if the door is more than ten years old. Pick the door you can afford to lose from your deposit, not the door the salesperson wants to sell you. Order the door from a place that has been in business for at least ten years and that has a return policy that does not charge you a restocking fee if the door is the wrong size, because the door is going to be the wrong size the first time. Install the door yourself if you have installed a door before, or hire a handyman who has installed a door before, or hire the super of a building in the next neighborhood who has installed a door before and who will do it for $400 cash on a Saturday. The total cost will be between $1,400 and $2,200, and it will come out of your deposit. It will be worth it when the wind does not come off the harbor in February and the lock engages when you push the door closed. Picking a door that holds up in a rental means measuring twice, accepting the deposit deduction, and knowing the landlord will look at the door and see a door. Take the measurement twice. Order the door once. Move on.