Hertfordshire Homes Guide
Windows for every Hertfordshire home.
A guide for homeowners thinking about replacing, restoring or upgrading. House by house. Free to read. No form.
Most people only replace their windows once. Maybe twice. So most people don't know what they don't know about it.
This guide is what we wish every Hertfordshire homeowner read before they spoke to anyone — including us. House by house, type by type. What you can do. What you can't. What conservation officers ask for. What a fair price looks like. What lead times you can expect.
It is free. There is no form to fill in. We do not need your email address. If it helps you make a better decision, with us or with someone else, we have done our job.
Victorian.
Most Hertfordshire Victorians still have their original sashes. Or their replacements look like they should have been originals.
A Victorian sash window is two vertically sliding sashes counter-balanced by cast iron weights hanging in the pockets either side of the box frame. The cords fail first — usually one at a time, every twenty years or so — and the moment one cord goes, the sash either won't open or won't stay open. Most Hertfordshire Victorians have at least one window in that state.
The choice is overhaul or replacement. Overhauling — splicing in new cords, easing the sashes, re-puttying the glass, repainting the box frame — is the right answer when the timber is sound and the original profile is worth keeping. Replacement is the right answer when the frames have rotted in the cill, the joinery has opened up at the corners, or the original glazing bars have been removed during a 1980s "improvement" and need putting back.
In a conservation area, the conservation officer will want a like-for-like look — slim sightlines, a painted finish, the original glazing-bar layout, and an opening method that matches the original (a sliding sash, not a tilt-turn pretending to be a sash from the street). A timber-effect uPVC flush sash, drawn to the profile, meets most of what they ask for. We have these conversations weekly.
A typical full-house Victorian sash project in Hertfordshire is twelve to sixteen windows, a four-to-eight-week lead time, a few days on site to fit, and the compliance paperwork to follow.
Edwardian.
Edwardian homes often mix sashes and casements with leaded lights — and the original mix is worth keeping.
An Edwardian villa typically has tall sashes on the principal rooms, smaller casements or top-lights to the rear, and a bay window on the front that may be either sash-filled or casement-filled depending on the architect. The leaded light — a single decorative pane in a stair window, a half-glazed front door, or a top-light over a bay — is a feature worth identifying before any quote is drawn up.
The mix is the character of the house. The temptation is to replace everything with the same product and lose the rhythm. We typically draw sashes to match the sashes, casements to match the casements, and replicate the leaded light into the new units rather than abandoning it.
Bay windows on Edwardian villas are usually structural sets — three lights at the front, with two angled returns at the sides. They have to be designed and installed as one assembly, not as three independent windows. The roof above the bay is often part of the carpentry too, and the joint between bay roof and main wall is where most of the heat loss happens.
A typical full-bay project on an Edwardian villa is the front bay plus the two side returns, a four-to-eight-week lead time, three to five days on site.
1930s semi.
The 1930s semi is the most common house in Hertfordshire. Its bay window is the front of the house — and changing it changes everything.
The 1930s semi-detached house has a particular grammar. A square plan, a hipped or gabled tiled roof, pebbledash or red brick walls, and a bay window on the front sitting room. The bay is the visual centre of the elevation. Replace it well and the house reads as it should. Replace it badly and the house reads wrong from a hundred yards away.
The original bay would have been timber, with three or four lights, usually with a small top-opening hopper on each side. Most have been replaced once already — often with uPVC sash-effect in the 1990s, often badly proportioned. The mouldings are heavier than the originals, the glazing bars are stuck-on rather than structural, and the bay roof is usually clad in something that wasn't there before.
The right answer depends on what survives. Where the original bay is still in place, we usually recommend a like-for-like timber-effect uPVC replacement to the original profile. Where the bay has already been replaced once with a heavy-profile uPVC, we draw a new flush casement set that reinstates the proportions of the 1934 original — even if that means going to slightly more expensive material.
The hopper top-lights are worth keeping. They're a piece of period detail that does an unglamorous job — night ventilation in a bedroom — very well, and they read correctly from the street.
Mock-Tudor and 1930s detached.
Mock-Tudor doesn't have to mean fake-Tudor. Done well, it is the most kerb-appeal house style in the county.
A mock-Tudor detached house in Hertfordshire usually has half-timbered upper gables, leaded-light windows in metal or timber frames, an oak-framed porch, and a deep tile roof. The leaded lights are the defining feature, and the temptation to replace them with plain double-glazed sealed units is what destroys the look.
Leaded lights can be replicated into modern double-glazed sealed units. The lead is bonded to the inner face of the outer pane, with a matching pattern on the inner face of the inner pane, so the diamond or rectangular grid reads correctly from both sides. The work is more expensive than a plain pane. It is also the single decision that keeps the house worth what it's worth.
Frame material on a mock-Tudor house is best done in a dark woodgrain finish — foiled uPVC or composite — to match the timber-framed gables above. Painted white is wrong. Painted in any of the modern grey palettes is wrong. The frames want to disappear into the timber-framed gables above, and that means going dark.
Hardware is leaded-glass-friendly: monkey-tail handles in matt black or antique brass, brass casement stays, never anodised silver. The house knows what it is. The hardware should know too.
Post-war / 1960s–1980s.
The windows in a post-war estate house are usually the cheapest decision the builder made. They're the best place to start.
A post-war or 1960s–80s estate house is usually well-built in the structural elements and let down by the joinery. The original windows were softwood casements, sometimes with louvred top-lights, sometimes with horizontal slider lights. By now most have been replaced once with first-generation uPVC, which has often gone milky on the south elevation and is starting to fail at the corners.
This is the house type where uPVC is, often, the right answer. The brick and tile around the openings doesn't reward an expensive timber upgrade — but a modern, well-detailed uPVC casement with proper glazing performance and decent ironmongery is a substantial improvement on a 1990s replacement. We use the better end of the uPVC market, with slimmer frames and concealed hardware, not the budget end.
Aluminium is also a reasonable choice on this house type, particularly on rear elevations where a slimmer frame profile pulls more light into the kitchen. The cost difference between mid-range uPVC and entry aluminium is smaller than most homeowners expect.
Front doors on this house type benefit from a composite door upgrade — bigger improvement per pound spent than almost any window decision.
Modern new-build.
Builder-grade windows in a £900k new-build will surprise you. So will how affordably they can be upgraded.
A modern new-build in Hertfordshire — anywhere on the executive estates around Welwyn, Berkhamsted, or the edges of Hemel — typically arrives with white uPVC windows specified by the housebuilder to a price. The frames are heavier than they need to be, the glass is single-coated, and the bifold-set onto the garden, if it exists, is often the cheapest one the housebuilder could get certified.
The good news is that the openings are usually well-formed: square, plumb, with consistent reveals. That means an upgrade is straightforward — you're replacing windows in a known geometry, not fighting the building.
The most popular upgrade we do on this house type is the rear elevation: replacing the entire back of the house with slim aluminium — a large bifold or sliding patio set onto the garden, with matched slim aluminium fixed lights to either side. The cost difference between the builder's spec and a proper aluminium upgrade is usually smaller than the homeowner expects, and it is the single change that makes the house feel like an architect designed it rather than a development team.
Front-of-house, the question is more nuanced. Sometimes the right answer is to leave the builder windows for now and upgrade the front entrance door, which makes a disproportionate difference for the budget.
Conservation areas in Hertfordshire.
St Albans has seventeen conservation areas. Harpenden has its own. Berkhamsted's covers the high street and the canal. Hemel's old town has more rules than most people expect. We know them all.
A conservation area is a designation made by the local authority to protect the character of a particular street, neighbourhood or town centre. Inside a conservation area, certain works that would normally be "permitted development" — including, sometimes, window replacement — require a planning application. The exact restrictions vary by authority, and within an authority they vary by individual conservation area.
An Article 4 direction is a specific extra restriction that removes permitted-development rights from a defined area. In Hertfordshire, Article 4 directions covering window and door replacement exist in parts of St Albans, parts of central Harpenden, and in specific streets in Berkhamsted, Hertford, and Hitchin. If your house is inside one, you need planning permission for new windows even if they look identical to the originals.
The local conservation officers we deal with in St Albans, Hemel, Harpenden, Berkhamsted, Hitchin and Hertford are, in our experience, reasonable people doing a difficult job. They are not, on the whole, trying to stop you from making your house warmer. They are trying to stop the street from turning into a bad version of itself. If you arrive with the right drawings, the right photos of the original detail, and a sensible proposal that respects the rhythm of the elevation, they say yes.
We handle these conversations on your behalf. You don't talk to the council. We do — by email, with the right photos, with the proposed glazing bar layouts and the proposed paint colours, and with a polite cover note. Most decisions come back inside six weeks.
Book a home visit.
Book a home visit and we'll talk through your project at your house — no call centre, no hard sell. We call back within two business hours, and you'll get an itemised written quote.