Raleigh Window Pros: Replacement Windows, Patio Doors & Entry Doors
Expert residential and commercial window services. Measured quotes, labelled ratings per opening, and the code case named before the product.
- ✓Every quote names the code case: repair or full replacement
- ✓NFRC-labelled U-factor and SHGC written per opening
- ✓Bedroom net clear opening measured before anything is ordered
- ✓Written workmanship warranty on the installation itself
Why Raleigh Chooses Raleigh Window Pros
- ✓We name which of the four cases in North Carolina's window-replacement interpretation your opening falls into, and the quote says so in plain words
- ✓Climate Zone 4A numbers go on the proposal per opening, taken from the certified NFRC label rather than a brochure's centre-of-glass figure
- ✓We tell you where to spend the Section N1102.3.3 exemption, because twenty-four square feet of it exists once per dwelling and most people waste it
- ✓No residential aluminium in Wake County, and no impact-rated glazing sold as hurricane protection a hundred and twenty miles from the coast
- ✓Sash packs, operator swaps, rescreening and glass-only reglazing are quoted as finished jobs, not as an opening move toward a whole-house order
- ✓We tell you the state licensing threshold is forty thousand dollars and that most window jobs fall under it, then tell you to ask every bidder for a number anyway
How It Works
Name the case before naming a product
We walk every opening and decide which of the four cases in the state's window-replacement interpretation it falls into: glazing only, sash only, insert into a retained frame, or full assembly. That decision comes before any catalogue is opened, because it sets the price range and it determines whether the energy table applies to your order at all.
Probe the sill, read the reveal
An awl goes into the sill nose and the bottom of each jamb, and the reveal gets measured at head, sill and both jambs. Soft wood or more than about a quarter inch out of square rules out an insert. We would rather find that with a tape in our hand than with your siding already off the wall.
Put the labelled numbers on the proposal
Each opening gets its whole-product U-factor and solar heat gain coefficient written on the quote, taken from the NFRC certified label rather than a marketing sheet. Bedrooms also get their existing and proposed net clear opening in square feet, so an egress problem is visible on paper before anything is ordered.
One crew from sill pan to trim wrap
The same people who measured do the install. Full-frame openings get a sloped sill pan lapped over the housewrap, low-expansion foam in a single light pass, and exterior trim returned to match what was there. Nobody hands a leak to a second crew who did not set the window.
Our Window Services in Raleigh, NC
Energy-Efficient Windows for Climate Zone 4A
Wake County sits in Climate Zone 4A, and the figure North Carolina holds a replaced window to is a U-factor of 0.35 with a solar heat gain coefficient of 0.30. Both come from Table N1102.1.2.
Vinyl Insert Windows
North Carolina's own code interpretation puts insert windows in a category most buyers never hear named. Keep the existing frame, set a new unit inside it, and the state calls that work a repair rather than an alteration.
Fiberglass Windows
Pultruded fiberglass and ordinary glass grow at almost identical rates when they are heated. That single property is why a fiberglass frame keeps its seal geometry through a Raleigh year that runs from the low twenties in January to the high nineties in July.
Clad-Wood Windows
An aluminium-clad wood window is a wood window wearing a coat. The wood carries the structure, the extruded cladding takes the weather, and the joint between the two decides whether the thing lasts thirty years or twelve.
Aluminum Windows
We do not sell ordinary residential aluminium replacement windows in Wake County. Not as a budget line, not as a colour match, not on request.
Double-Hung Windows and Sash Packs
The state's window-replacement interpretation names double-hung and casement assemblies specifically, and it puts sash-only work in the repair column. Change the sashes inside a sound frame and no energy table applies to the job at all.
Casement and Awning Windows
A casement seals by compression rather than by contact. Its sash swings inward against a bulb gasket, and a multi-point lock pulls it tight the whole way round.
Horizontal Sliding Windows
The state's repair categories name double-hung and casement assemblies. Sliders are not on that list, which in practice means a slider problem lands on the replacement side of the ledger more often than a homeowner expects it to.
Bay and Bow Windows
A bay is not really a window at all. It is a small roof sitting over a cantilevered floor, an insulated seat board and three or four sashes.
Picture and Architectural Windows
Fixed glass is the cheapest square foot of window you can buy and the best-performing one. No sash, no balance, no weatherstrip and no air-leakage path at all.
Basement and Bedroom Egress Windows
Egress is the one place on this site where we tell you the code is the specification rather than a floor. Nothing about it is frozen, negotiable or exempt, and no insert we could sell you is worth failing it.
Laminated and Impact-Rated Glass
Wake County sits about a hundred and twenty miles from the ocean and is not in a wind-borne debris region. Impact-rated windows are not required here, and we are not going to imply on a quote that they are.
Sliding Patio Doors
A patio door is the largest single hole in a Raleigh house and the component the family touches most. Both facts point at the same part of the assembly, and it is not the glass everybody asks about first.
French Doors
A French door trades a slider's mechanical simplicity for a compression seal and a wider clear opening. Both leaves swing, both latch into the frame, and when the frame is set correctly the pair seals better than any slider sold.
Entry Doors
North Carolina treats an entry door differently from a window, and the difference is worth knowing before you start shopping. Opaque doors between conditioned and unconditioned space carry a maximum U-factor of 0.35 under Section N1102.3.4.
Window Screens and Rescreening
Screens are the smallest job we do and the one most often used as an excuse to sell a whole house of windows. They are not a reason to replace anything.
Glass Repair and Sealed Unit Replacement
A fogged window is a failed sealed unit, not a failed window. Frame, sash, hardware and weatherstrip are all still working.
Commercial Storefront Glass
Commercial glazing in North Carolina runs on a different chapter of the code and a different set of rules about who may legally do the work. Both differences catch building owners out, and the second one costs more when it does.
What Raleigh Customers Say
Three companies quoted a whole house. These people measured, told us eleven of our units were fine, and replaced glass in five sashes. The fogging is gone and we spent about a fifth of the lowest other bid.
They wrote the U-factor and the solar heat gain number next to every opening on the estimate and explained where the code number came from. Nobody else did that. The install crew was the same two guys who measured.
Our back bedroom failed egress and the first contractor never checked. These folks measured the clear opening, showed me the arithmetic, and put in a casement that actually meets it. They also talked me out of the impact glass I asked for.
Sill was soft at two openings and they showed me the awl going in before they said a word about price. Those two went full-frame with a proper pan, the rest took inserts. Straight answers the whole way through.
Raleigh Window Pros installs and replaces windows, patio doors and entry doors across Raleigh and Wake County. Vinyl inserts, pultruded fiberglass, clad-wood and thermally broken aluminium. Double-hung, casement, awning, slider, bay, bow and fixed architectural units. Sealed-unit glass repair, sash packs, rescreening, egress work and commercial storefront glazing.
We work from one distinction North Carolina's code draws that almost nobody in this market mentions. The Office of State Fire Marshal's interpretation of Residential Code Section N1109.1.1 sorts window work into four cases. Replacing glazing in an existing sash is a repair. Replacing sashes is a repair. Setting an insert into a retained frame is a repair. Pulling the entire assembly is not.
That one distinction decides your product, your price, and whether Table N1102.1.2 applies to the order at all. Wake County is Climate Zone 4A, where a replaced assembly must meet a 0.35 U-factor and a 0.30 solar heat gain coefficient, figures North Carolina froze in place until 2031. Every quote we write names the case your opening falls in, states the labelled numbers, and leaves the decision with you.
About Raleigh Window Pros in Raleigh, NC
Raleigh Window Pros works across Wake County and the towns immediately around it, replacing and repairing windows, patio doors and entry doors in houses, rentals and small commercial buildings. The work ranges from a single fogged sealed unit to a full-frame order across thirty openings, and we quote both with the same level of detail.
What we do differently is start with the code rather than the catalogue. North Carolina's own interpretation of Residential Code Section N1109.1.1 divides window work into repairs and replacements, and that division decides your price, your product and whether Table N1102.1.2 applies at all. Most quotes in this market never mention it, which is how a homeowner ends up buying a replacement when the state considers the job a repair.
There are jobs we turn down. If your sealed units are scattered failures in sound frames, hire us for glass and nothing else. If you want residential aluminium, or clad-wood on an unprotected wall, or impact glazing sold as hurricane protection this far inland, we are the wrong company and we will say so on the phone rather than at the kitchen table.
Recent Projects Across Wake County
Service Areas
Raleigh Window Pros serves Raleigh, NC and surrounding communities including:
Storefront, curtain wall and business-park glazing
Wake County's commercial stock runs from downtown Raleigh street-level retail to the low-rise business parks strung along the Beltline and Interstate 40 and out through Garner, Clayton, Selma and Smithfield. A great deal of it is original single-glazed aluminium storefront from the 1980s and 1990s with no thermal break in the frame.
Commercial work sits under a different chapter of the Energy Conservation Code than the residential table quoted elsewhere on this site, and it also crosses North Carolina's forty-thousand-dollar licensing threshold far more often than house work does. We quote it on that basis and we say which set of rules you are reading.
- ✓Captured storefront systems reglazed to insulating units without replacing the framing
- ✓Two-inch by four-and-a-half-inch extruded framing with poured and debridged thermal breaks
- ✓Tempered and laminated safety glazing where the code and the location require it
- ✓Commercial entrance doors: offset pivots, overhead closers and bottom rails serviced separately
- ✓Emergency board-up and same-week glass ordering for broken street-level lites
- ✓Spandrel panels and shadow-box details matched to the existing elevation
- ✓Interior office partitions and borrowed-light glazing in occupied suites
- ✓Licence number and certificates supplied before a purchase order is issued
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a permit to replace windows in Raleigh?
It depends on which case your work falls into and on what the City of Raleigh's inspections department says about your specific job, so call them or let us call for you.
As a rule, glazing swapped into an existing sash and sash-only work are treated as repairs, while pulling out whole assemblies, changing an opening size, or cutting a new opening are not. Anything that changes a structural header or an egress opening is firmly on the permit side, and we treat it that way.
Do replacement windows in North Carolina have to meet the energy code?
Some do and some do not, which is the whole point of the state interpretation we quote throughout this site. Where an entire existing fenestration unit is replaced with a new product including frame, sash and glazing, that unit must meet the applicable U-factor and solar heat gain coefficient in Table N1102.1.2.
Where you replace only glazing, only sashes, or set an insert assembly into the retained existing frame, the code treats the work as a repair to be made with like or more energy-efficient material.
Is it true North Carolina's energy code will not change until 2031?
For the residential energy provisions, yes. Session Law 2023-108, passed in 2023 over a veto, reorganised the code councils and barred the new Residential Code Council from adopting energy-conservation amendments to the Residential Code before 2031.
The practical effect is that the 0.35 U-factor and 0.30 solar heat gain numbers that apply to your replacement windows today are the numbers for the rest of the decade. Anyone telling you to buy ahead of a tightening code in this state is selling, not informing.
Does a window job in Wake County need a licensed general contractor?
Usually not, and that surprises people. North Carolina requires a general contractor's licence on projects of forty thousand dollars or more, a threshold raised from thirty thousand in October 2023 by the same act that froze the energy code.
Most whole-house window replacements in Wake County land under that figure, which means the law does not force the person selling it to hold a licence at all. Ask every bidder for a number and write down the answer, because nothing else in the process will check for you.
Do I need impact or hurricane windows in Raleigh?
No. Wake County is roughly a hundred and twenty miles inland and is not in a wind-borne debris region, so impact-rated glazing is not required and we will not imply otherwise on a quote. Laminated glass is still worth buying for sound, for security and for ultraviolet control, and the useful detail is that laminated glazing set into a sound existing sash counts as a repair. You can treat two or three specific openings without replacing a single window.
Insert or full-frame for my house?
Probe the sill and the answer usually decides itself. A square, dry frame in a house built since the mid-nineties takes an insert well, keeps your siding and trim untouched, and costs less, at the price of roughly an inch of glass on each side.
A frame with soft wood at the sill nose or the jamb bottoms is not a frame any more, and putting an insert over it seals the problem in behind new vinyl for six years. We measure and photograph both before recommending either.