All-glass entrance systems with minimal hardware
A frameless entrance is a door made from a single sheet of toughened glass with no surrounding frame. Hardware attaches directly to the glass through patch fittings at the top and bottom corners, and the door pivots on a floor spring set into the slab.
The appeal is that the door almost disappears. In a lobby or showroom where the whole frontage is glass, a framed door interrupts that; a frameless one does not. It reads as an opening rather than a door.
The constraints are real, though. The glass must be toughened, typically 12mm, and every hole and cut-out has to be made before toughening — nothing can be drilled or altered afterwards. That means the hardware specification has to be final before the glass is ordered, and a change late on means new glass rather than an adjustment.
They work well in lobbies, showrooms, salons, offices and interior retail entrances: places with controlled traffic, reasonable weather protection and an appearance-led brief.
They are a poorer choice as a primary exterior entrance in exposed conditions. Frameless doors seal far less well than a framed door because there is no continuous gasket, and they are not thermally broken. On a heated lobby facing the street, a framed thermally broken entrance behind a frameless inner door is often the better arrangement.
They are also not the right answer where panic hardware is required. Exit devices on frameless glass are possible but constrained, and a wide-stile framed door is usually simpler and cheaper to make compliant.
The floor spring sits in a cassette cast or cut into the slab, and the finished floor level has to be known before that is set. This needs coordinating with the flooring contractor early — retrofitting a floor spring into a finished floor is disruptive and sometimes not possible at all.
Where the slab cannot be cut, an overhead transom closer is the alternative. It works well but adds a visible closer above the door, which loses some of the reason for choosing frameless in the first place.
Frameless Glass Systems Building Entrance Doors Storefront Doors Tempered Glass Starphire Glass Panels & Partitions
A frameless entrance door has no surrounding frame. The glass itself is the structural element, and everything is carried by patch fittings — stainless or brass clamps at the top and bottom corners that grip the glass and house the pivot.
That has one consequence which governs the whole job: every cut-out, hole and notch must be made before the glass is tempered. Patch positions, lock preparation, handle holes, the cut-out for the floor closer spindle — all of it. A tempered door cannot be drilled or adjusted afterwards. If a fitting position is wrong, the leaf is scrap.
This is why frameless entrance work is measured and set out carefully rather than ordered from nominal dimensions, and why the closer and the lock have to be chosen before the glass is made rather than picked at installation.
1/2″ tempered is the common specification for interior and light commercial entrances. 3/4″ is used for tall or wide leaves and for heavier use, where the extra rigidity stops the leaf flexing as it swings.
For an exterior entrance we would generally recommend laminated rather than monolithic tempered. A tempered leaf failing leaves the entrance completely open, which at a shop or a building lobby is a security problem as well as a safety one.
A glass door is heavy and has no frame to hide hardware in, so the closer does a great deal of work.
Floor-concealed closers sit in a cast-in box in the slab and are the standard for frameless entrances — nothing is visible, and they handle the weight. The catch is that the box has to be set into the floor, so this is a decision that belongs at construction stage. Retrofitting one into a finished slab means cutting the floor.
Overhead concealed closers live in a header above the door and avoid the floor work, but need a header deep enough to take them.
Whichever is used, it must be sized to the leaf. An undersized closer will not pull a heavy glass door shut against wind pressure — and a door that does not latch is a security failure, not an annoyance. On an exposed entrance that is the most common complaint we are called to.
Safety glazing is required in doors and adjacent panels, so the glass is tempered or laminated by law rather than by choice.
Accessibility limits the force needed to open the door and governs threshold height and bevel. The closer has to hold the door shut against wind while still opening within the permitted force — those pull against each other, and resolving it is a specification exercise rather than an adjustment on the day.
Panic hardware is required where the occupancy demands it, and on a frameless leaf the options are more limited than on a framed one, so it needs confirming early.
Visibility marking. A large clear glass door in a public entrance should be made visible — a manifestation band, frit or applied graphic. This is a genuine safety matter and it is frequently left out of a specification and added after someone walks into it.
These describe the kind of work each area brings rather than any specific client project.
Retail frontage — SoHo, Madison Avenue, Williamsburg, Cedarhurst. The frameless entrance exists to remove visual barriers between the street and the product. Low-iron glass is often specified here so the entrance does not put a green cast over a window display.
Office lobbies and reception — Midtown, Tribeca, Downtown Brooklyn. Usually interior or semi-protected, often with over-panels and sidelites patched into the same assembly, and usually where access control has to be integrated into a glass leaf with no frame to hide it in. That is a coordination exercise and is best resolved before fabrication.
Restaurant and hospitality — Astoria, the Lower East Side, Park Slope. Heavy two-way traffic at service times, so closer sizing and patch specification matter more than appearance. Door weight also changes with the glass, and the glass and hardware have to be decided together.
Institutional and commercial — the United Nations area, Downtown. Where security requirements and access control take priority, laminated construction and a framed or part-framed alternative may be the better answer, and we will say so.
Tell us the opening size, whether the floor is already poured, and whether the door needs access control or panic hardware. Those three answers determine most of the specification. We fabricate and install across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, and throughout Northern New Jersey, the Jersey Shore, Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley.
Tell us about the opening and we will specify it for you.
