Aluminium windows in Forest Row, Felbridge and East Grinstead

Aluminium suits two very different kinds of house around Forest Row. The first is the Arts and Crafts house and its later imitators: tile-hung, deep-roofed houses with long runs of grouped casements, the style Philip Webb used at Standen near East Grinstead in the 1890s. Their windows were often metal or slim timber with leaded lights, and a slim aluminium or steel-look frame keeps those thin lines.

The second is the modern detached house or bungalow, common in Felbridge and Dormansland, where owners want anthracite grey, black or dark green and big panes of glass.

The kinds we fit

• Slimline aluminium casements: narrow frames, flat or bevelled, in any colour. The usual choice for a whole-house change of look.
• Aluminium flush casements: the sash closes level with the frame like a timber casement, so it sits well on older brick and tile-hung houses.
• Steel-look heritage aluminium: very thin sightlines and true glazing bars, for houses that originally had steel windows, including some interwar houses and Arts and Crafts conversions.
• Aluminium tilt-and-turn: for wide openings and upstairs rooms where cleaning from inside matters.

Where aluminium needs care

In the conservation areas a switch from white timber to grey aluminium may not count as looking similar, which would mean a planning application. On a listed building aluminium is rarely accepted at all. Outside those cases, and that is most houses in Felbridge, Dormansland, Ashurst Wood and the East Grinstead estates, it is a free choice.

Aluminium keeps its colour, needs only washing and does not mind the shade and damp of a house among trees. That is a real advantage on the wooded plots of Dormans Park and the forest edge, where painted timber goes green quickly.

A typical job

Illustrative example of a typical job

A whole detached bungalow in Felbridge in slim aluminium

A detached bungalow in Felbridge, where detached homes make up most of the housing. All windows are at ground level.

• Seven slimline aluminium casements, about 1200 by 1200mm each
• Anthracite grey outside, white inside, double glazed
• Whole house in one visit, no scaffold

Typically £9,450 to £17,850, supplied and fitted, including VAT.

Felbridge is in Surrey and Tandridge District, with no conservation area, so a change of material and colour here is a free choice for a house.

All eight example jobs.