Automatic doors thatkeep moving, inPeterborough and London

Sliding automatic doors are the most common commercial option, suited to high footfall entrances where a wide, unobstructed opening is needed without doors swinging into a lobby or pavement. Telescopic sliding doors take this further, stacking leaves to give a much wider clear opening for the same header length, which is useful where the full width of an opening needs to be usable, such as loading areas or busy retail entrances.

Automatic swing doors suit narrower openings or situations where a hinged door already exists and needs converting to power-assisted operation, which is a common accessibility upgrade for older buildings. Curved sliding doors are used where architectural glazing or a rounded entrance lobby calls for a bespoke shape, and these tend to be a more specialist installation requiring closer coordination with the building's structural openings.

Most automatic door frames are aluminium, chosen for its strength-to-weight ratio and resistance to corrosion, and can be powder-coated to match a building's branding or existing shopfront colour scheme. Glazing options range from standard toughened glass through to fire-rated glazing where the opening forms part of a fire compartment line, and acoustic or solar-control glass for buildings with specific thermal or noise requirements.

Threshold and floor track specification matters more than people expect. Heavy footfall entrances need a robust, low-maintenance track system, while healthcare and food environments often need flush thresholds for trolley and wheelchair access, which changes how the door is set into the floor during installation.

The header box houses the motor, control board and safety logic, and this is where the difference between brands is most noticeable. Geze, Record, Dormakaba and Assa Abloy each use their own control software and diagnostic approach, which is why brand familiarity genuinely speeds up both installation and fault-finding rather than being a marketing point.

Activation sensors, safety sensors on the leading and trailing edges, and any integration with access control or fire alarm systems all need to be commissioned together, not treated as separate systems bolted on afterwards. A door that opens correctly but is not properly integrated with the fire alarm can fail to go into fail-safe mode during an evacuation, which is a serious risk that is entirely avoidable with correct commissioning.

Commercial automatic doors are built for far higher cycle counts than a domestic system would ever see, often tens of thousands of openings a month on a busy retail unit, which means components are specified differently and servicing intervals need to be shorter. Residential and low-footfall commercial automatic doors can run to a lighter specification and longer service gaps without the same wear pressure.

Specialist applications, such as automatic doors integrated into fire compartment lines, cleanroom environments, or cold storage entrances, bring additional requirements around sealing, self-closing behaviour and hold-open device integration. We handle these as a matter of course, but they are exactly the sort of installation where a proper survey before quoting genuinely changes the specification.

A well-installed and properly maintained automatic door commonly lasts well over a decade, but that lifespan depends heavily on servicing. Motors, belts, rollers and sensors all wear with cycle count, and planned maintenance is designed to replace or adjust these components before they cause an unplanned closure of your entrance.

We offer planned maintenance contracts on any automatic door we install or take on, regardless of brand, with visits scheduled to suit the building's usage pattern rather than a generic annual tick-box visit.