What the building decides for you
Retrofit armouring keeps your door and strengthens it: a folded steel skin on the leaf, angle sections protecting the frame, a multipoint lock, anti-lift pins on the hinge side. It is often the only workable route in the older buildings of the centre, between rue Meynadier and the allées de la Liberté, where landing doors are not of ordinary size.
A full armoured door set is a complete assembly — leaf, frame, lock, hinges — fitted in place of the existing one. Its strength does not depend on the original joinery, which makes it the logical answer once the frame has suffered. The opening still has to allow it: in Le Suquet, openings are tall, narrow and rarely square, so made-to-measure becomes the norm.
In La Bocca and the 1960s and 1970s condominiums, the question shifts to the substrate. An original steel frame, a lightweight lining wall and a concrete reveal are three different jobs. What the fixings will bite into is examined first, before anything is decided about the leaf itself.
The landing, the management and the rest of the home
Your landing door is private property, but the face of it looking onto the shared landing is not always yours to alter. Many Cannes building regulations require a consistent appearance on the landing, particularly in the seafront residences where entrances were refitted in one go. Ask the management before ordering, and get in writing what you are allowed to change.
In the old town, altering the external appearance of a door visible from the street can require planning consent. The surroundings of Notre-Dame-d’Espérance and the Mont-Chevalier tower are watched on that account. A call to the planning department of the Ville de Cannes avoids ordering joinery that then has to be modified.
Finally, a strengthened door moves attention elsewhere. On a garden-level flat in Petit Juas whose sliding window has neither shutters nor reinforced glazing, armouring the entrance changes the point of attack without changing the situation. So every opening is looked at first: service door, garage access, ground-floor window onto the lane, gate at the bottom of the garden. The survey is done on site, and a detailed quote is presented before the work.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our door reinforcement page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Cannes.