What a storefront door is made of
A storefront door's class is named for its vertical stiles. In one storefront maker's line the narrow stile is 2-1/8 inches, the medium 3-1/2 and the wide 5, on a door 1-3/4 inches deep, and that maker places narrow stiles in moderate traffic such as offices and stores, medium stiles in schools, institutions and other high traffic, and wide stiles in banks, libraries and heavy traffic.
The glass sits between glazing stops, which one maker's specification makes hook-in stops with EPDM gaskets reinforced with non-stretchable cord, the gaskets replaceable. On that maker's doors, weathering is a bulb weatherstrip in the door and frame with an optional blade sweep, and the threshold is one piece of extruded aluminum per opening. Doors hang on offset pivots, butt hinges, continuous geared hinges or center pivots.
The glass in the door
The National Glass Association (NGA) counts storefront door glass as safety glazing: its technical paper says fully tempered or laminated glass meeting ANSI or CPSC specifications is required for doors, side lites and entrances, and the CPSC's standard, 16 CFR part 1201, sets safety requirements for the glazing in doors, with listed exemptions.
By NGA's rule of thumb, fully tempered glass has about four times the breakage strength of annealed glass of the same thickness, but NGA notes broken tempered glass can fall out of the frame and spontaneous breakage is possible. Laminated glass, lites bonded with an interlayer, is NGA's alternative where fallout is a concern, though if both lites of a tempered laminate break, the laminate may fall from the opening. Keeping that glass clean and checked is the business of storefront glass care and inspection.
Accurate Glass & Mirror supplies and installs tempered and laminated safety glass, thermal and low-E glass, fire-rated glass, and bullet-resistant or blast-resistant glass. The U.S. Department of Energy, in guidance written for home windows and doors, says more panes, low-E coatings, argon or krypton fills and less conductive frames lower a glazing product's U-factor. NGA says fire-rated glazing is tested, listed and labeled, and New Jersey's ordinary maintenance list excepts opening protectives in fire-resistance rated assemblies from same-opening door replacement and excludes "Any work affecting structural or fire safety," so fire-rated door glass is a question for the fire official as well as the construction official.
Sources: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 16 CFR part 1201 (eCFR); New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, N.J.A.C. 5:23 Uniform Construction Code
Reglazed in place
Reglazed in place means the door keeps its frame and hardware and only the glass changes: one storefront maker's specification reads "Aluminum-framed glass doors shall be reglazable without dismantling perimeter framing," and a second maker's manual sets the new glass on setting blocks and squares the door by the glass jack in its top rail, so the glass helps hold the door square.
A new lite is made to the opening, never trimmed, because NGA says "all fabrication including cutting, hole-drilling, notching, or edge treatment must be performed prior to the glass being heat-treated." Accurate Glass & Mirror measures the glass on site, cuts and edges it in its Lodi shop and sends it out for tempering. Our own crew sets it, never a subcontractor. After a break, the opening is secured first and the glass made to it after, with boarding up a broken storefront described on its own page.
New door or refit
A refit keeps the door and renews what wears: the glass remade and reset, the replaceable gaskets, and the closer and the hardware the door hangs on. That side of the work is commercial door repair. The closer itself belongs to door closer repair and adjustment.
A new door makes sense when the door or its frame has failed, when the stile class no longer suits the traffic, or when the opening needs thermal framing, which one storefront maker sells in non-thermal, thermal and ultra-thermal versions. Accurate Glass & Mirror designs and installs custom glass storefronts and glass entry doors from standard to custom configurations, with new versus refit worked out at the free on-site measure and your general contractor brought in where structural framing is involved.
What the on-site measure records
The free on-site measure is where a new lite or door gets matched to the opening: for glass, the daylight opening, the stops or gaskets that hold the lite and the permanent mark on the existing glass, which tells what was there; for a door, the stile class, how it hangs and what closes it. Tell us your hours at the measure.
Measuring at the door matters because the glass cannot be altered later: NGA says the glass in heavy glass door systems cannot be modified or refabricated, so it is important that shop drawing measurements be field verified. A photo texted to Jessica gives a first look, and a firm, itemized quote in writing comes after the measure. For the shop's other business glass, start at commercial glass.
What your architect and the construction official decide
Code compliance for a storefront door is shared by role: one storefront maker's specification puts it on the owner, the specifier, the architect, the general contractor, the installer and the fabricator, consistent with their roles, and NGA says deflection under wind, not breaking strength, usually sets the glass thickness of an exterior heavy glass entrance, which a design professional works out. On an accessible route, the 2010 ADA Standards reach the door's hardware and clear width, which the architect sizes in new or altered work.
In New Jersey, replacing a door "in the same opening without altering the dimensions or framing of the original opening" is listed as ordinary maintenance, subject to egress limits and an exception for opening protectives in fire-resistance rated assemblies. When the construction official classes a door job as a renovation or an alteration, replaced doors may not exceed the energy code's U-factor, permit or not, and the architect sizes that; the building subcode is the 2024 International Building Code under New Jersey amendments effective August 17, 2026, and which edition governs a job is also the official's call.
Inside Hackensack's Downtown Rehabilitation Area, the city's Downtown Rehabilitation Plan, as amended June 2023, does not permit smoked or tinted glass or anodized or mill finish aluminum "for storefronts in new development" and sends existing storefronts to its rehabilitation standards; whether a property is inside the area is the city planning and zoning office's call, and commercial glass in Hackensack spells it out.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design; New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, N.J.A.C. 5:23 Uniform Construction Code; New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, 2024 model codes adoption notice; City of Hackensack, Downtown Rehabilitation Plan, amendments June 2023