Awning Windows in Portland, OR

The one window you can leave open in the rain

This is the whole reason awning windows belong in a Portland home. The sash hinges at the top and the bottom swings outward, tilting to roughly a 45 degree angle, so the glass sits over the gap like a tiny awning. Rain runs down the outside of the glass and drips clear of the opening instead of running back into the room. In a climate that sees rain more than 150 days a year, that means you can crack a window for fresh air on a wet day without coming home to a puddle on the sill.

Here is the honest limit, because we would rather you hear it from us. In a hard, wind-driven rain, the kind that blows sideways off a winter storm, water can still find its way past any open sash, awning included. The move then is simple: crank it shut, and the awning seals tighter than almost any other style, which is the next thing worth knowing.

Where awning windows work best

An awning is a specialist, not an every-opening window. Here is where it earns its place in a Northwest home:

• High on a wall. Up near the ceiling an awning gives you light and air while the wall below stays free for furniture, and it keeps the view in from passersby. A favorite in bathrooms and over a kitchen counter.
• Paired with a picture window. An awning set above or below a fixed picture window lets you keep the big clean view and still get a breeze, and it can stay open when a shower rolls through.
• Basements and low spots. Short, wide openings near grade suit the awning shape, and the outward tilt sheds the splash-back off the ground.
• Anywhere you want all-weather air. A damp Portland spring is exactly the season an awning was made for.

We keep awnings away from any spot where that tilted-out sash would hang over a walkway, a patio, or a deck and clip someone passing by. Those openings do better with a hung window or a slider, and we will flag it when we measure.

The Milgard awning windows we install

We install Milgard windows, and Milgard builds awnings in both frame materials, so you can match it to the opening and your budget:

• Vinyl, in the V300 Trinsic and V400 Tuscany series. The value choice for most awning openings, with the narrow frames most Portland homes want and the SmartTouch lock.
• C700 fiberglass. The stronger frame for a wide awning or a demanding spot, where you want the sash to hold its shape and the seal to last for decades.

On a wide awning the fiberglass frame stays flat where vinyl can flex, so we steer you to it only when the size actually earns it, never to pad the bill. Whatever we land on, the written quote spells out the Milgard series and the unit count, so another company's bid is easy to lay beside ours. The two frame materials are broken down on our vinyl windows in Portland and fiberglass windows in Portland pages, and the full lineup is on our Milgard windows in Portland page.

The honest trade-offs of awning windows

Before you order a houseful, here are the trade-offs worth hearing:

• The opening is modest. An awning tilts out partway, so it moves less air than a casement that swings fully open, and it rarely meets bedroom egress.
• The sash sticks out and down. That rules it out over a walkway, patio, or deck, where the tilted sash is in the way or at head height.
• The hardware has moving parts. A crank and a pair of hinges do more work than the plain balances in a hung window, so decades on, a worn operator is the part most likely to want replacing.
• The bug screen mounts indoors. Because the sash swings out, the screen lives on the room side of the glass, in view and within reach of indoor dust.

None of these are deal breakers. They just decide which openings get an awning and which get a different style, which we sort out opening by opening.

How we install your awning windows, and the warranty

We pull the old unit and haul it off that day. The new awning goes in set plumb and level to Oregon code. Then we dial in the operator and the locks until the sash tucks up flat the whole way around, because a loose awning is a leaky awning. The opening gets flashed and sealed for driving rain before the trim goes back, inside and out, and where code wants it, by a door, down low, or near a tub or stairs, the glass is tempered. We never leave a hole in your wall overnight, and once the glass arrives the on-site work usually wraps in a day or two.

Qualifying Milgard work carries a Limited Lifetime Warranty on the window itself, and we hand you our written workmanship warranty before the first old frame comes out. The coverage is laid out on our warranty page. Bigger commercial glazing runs through Exteriors Design, the company behind Gorilla Works, and we fit awnings on the Washington side too, covered on our window replacement in Vancouver, WA page. For the whole process from the first visit to the final walkthrough, see our Portland window installation page.