Double glazing in the West Midlands

Birmingham and Coventry have conservation areas covering whole streets of terraced housing, where the council expects window styles to match the originals, so check before choosing uPVC casements for a Victorian front. Elsewhere the large post-war estates are some of the most straightforward window replacements in the country. Shropshire and Herefordshire's timber-framed buildings are mostly listed and need specialist joinery.

The region's post-war estates are a large market for composite front doors replacing original timber or early uPVC. In the timber-framed towns of Shropshire and Herefordshire, doors on listed buildings need consent and are usually replaced in timber. Bifolds onto rear extensions are popular in the suburbs around Solihull and Sutton Coldfield.

Birmingham and the Black Country hold dense Victorian and Edwardian terraces alongside some of the largest post-war municipal estates in the country, much of it now owner-occupied. Cavity walls are the norm in the interwar and later stock. Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire are rural and older, with timber framing common.

Extensive Green Belt rings the conurbation and limits what can be built outward, so extensions and loft conversions carry more weight here than new outbuildings. The black-and-white timber-framed towns of Shropshire and Herefordshire hold heavy concentrations of listed buildings, where repair in traditional materials is usually the only route, and Ironbridge Gorge is a World Heritage Site with correspondingly tight control. Birmingham and Coventry both have conservation areas covering substantial areas of terraced housing, where materials and window styles have to be matched.

Close to the UK average for rainfall, sheltered from the worst of the Atlantic weather by the Welsh mountains. The Shropshire hills and the Staffordshire moorlands are wetter and colder than the conurbation. Nothing here is extreme, which makes the region a reasonable guide to typical UK weathering.