If you are staying in the house and the way it looks matters to you: yes. If you are letting it, selling it soon, or the budget is genuinely tight: no, and uPVC is the rational choice. Anyone who gives you a different answer is selling windows.
A rental property where the tenant will never notice the sightline. A house you are selling within two years, where you will not recover the difference. A budget that is already stretched, where a good uPVC window installed properly beats a cheap aluminium window installed badly, every single time.
And on a small, plain window on a rear elevation nobody looks at — the extra money buys you nothing there. Spend it on the front.
Windows are one of the least cost-effective ways to warm a house. If the goal is a lower heating bill, loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and draught-proofing will all return more per pound than new windows, by a wide margin.
Buy windows because they are failing, because they look wrong, or because you want the light. Do not buy them expecting the energy saving to pay for them — on any realistic sums, it will not, and any salesperson who tells you it will is doing arithmetic you should ask to see.
If you are staying in the house and its appearance matters to you, generally yes: 15–20% more glass, twice the lifespan of uPVC, and a finish that will not degrade. If it is a rental, a quick sale, or the budget is tight, uPVC is the rational choice and there is no shame in it.
Almost certainly not. Loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and draught-proofing all return far more per pound than replacement windows. Buy windows because the old ones have failed, because they look wrong, or because you want the light — not because a salesperson has shown you a payback calculation.
They present better than uPVC, particularly on period property, and are consistently treated as a premium feature. No one can promise a specific uplift — but slim frames and more glass are a visible upgrade in a way that a like-for-like uPVC swap simply is not.
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