Aluminium vs timber windows

Maintenance is the whole argument

A painted softwood window needs repainting every 3–5 years, and every time you skip it, water gets into the joints. Left long enough, the bottom rail rots and the window needs a joiner rather than a decorator. Hardwood and modern engineered timber last far longer — but they still need a coating cycle.

Aluminium needs washing. That's it. On a three-storey Victorian house with twelve windows, the difference over twenty years is thousands of pounds of scaffolding and decorating that simply never happens.

Where timber still wins

• Listed buildingsIf the officer requires timber, the answer is timber. There is no argument to be had.
• RepairabilityA rotten timber window can be spliced and repaired indefinitely. A damaged aluminium frame is replaced.
• The genuine articleOn a Georgian house, a well-made timber sash is the real thing. Aluminium can imitate a steel window convincingly; it imitates a timber sash less convincingly.

Aluminium-clad timber: the middle ground

Timber inside, aluminium outside. The interior has the warmth and the look of wood; the exterior takes the weather with a powder-coated aluminium skin that never needs painting.

It is the most expensive of the three options, and it is genuinely excellent — common in Scandinavian and passive-house construction, and increasingly used on high-end UK renovations where a conservation officer wants timber inside and the owner never wants to paint again.