Wood Windows in Richmond, VA

All-wood units arrive primed or bare and get painted on site, any color you like, to match trim that is usually painted wood anyway. The NFRC's durability guide calls wood easy to repair and maintain but prone to rot, so the paint is what keeps it alive, and the upkeep list further down gives the intervals. Paint also means the color can change whenever the house does. They make the most sense on a house whose siding and trim already get painted on a regular cycle. Ask whether the units come primed on every face, including the edges that disappear into the opening.

Here the wood frame wears an aluminum shell outside, so there's nothing to scrape or paint on the weather side; ENERGY STAR notes many wood windows are clad this way to cut upkeep. HomeGuide calls aluminum the most popular cladding and says it comes in a wide range of factory colors. The weak point is the seam: HomeGuide warns of trouble where cladding meets wood if water gets behind it, and the NFRC guide says cladding should keep moisture from forming underneath. Lifespan figures disagree. HomeGuide gives clad windows 30 to 50 years, while InterNACHI's table puts aluminum and aluminum-clad windows at 15 to 20.

Vinyl cladding does the same job with a PVC skin over the wood frame and sash. The NFRC guide describes vinyl and enameled metal claddings as giving wood frames much longer protection, and notes they generally come in a limited number of colors. Vinyl-clad wood is a fit when you want a stained or painted wood interior and a white or tan exterior that never needs paint. If the color you want isn't offered, aluminum cladding usually has more choices. Inside, treat the wood like any other wood window: seal or paint it, and keep condensation from sitting on the sill.

A true divided lite sets each small pane in its own muntin. With insulated glass that means many small sealed units and thick muntins, and many more seal edges that can fail. A simulated divided lite (SDL) uses one insulated unit with muntin bars bonded to the inside and outside faces and a spacer bar between the panes under each bar, so it casts the same shadow lines as the real thing. Grilles-between-the-glass are a flat grid inside the airspace only, so the glass face stays flat. In our view, SDL is the right call on a Colonial Revival or foursquare front where the grille pattern carries the look.

A wood insert is a complete window, frame and sash, sized to sit inside the old frame. The interior casing, plaster and outside brickmold stay, so the job is cleaner than a full tear-out, though you give up a little glass to the new frame. It suits an opening where the frame is square and dry but the sashes are beyond saving. If only the sashes are worn, a sash kit that reuses the frame may cost less; see window sash replacement. A good installer will test the sill with an awl before quoting an insert, because a soft sill under a new unit is money wasted.