How to Read a Window Quote: Where the Money Actually Goes

Article

October 26, 2026

A window quote is not one number. It is five numbers added together, and in most quotes you are shown one of them.

That matters because the question buyers actually ask — is this quote reasonable? — cannot be answered from a unit price. The same 1,500 × 1,400 mm unit, the same opening style, the same nominal glazing, can legitimately be quoted at EUR 260 or EUR 690 depending on what sits inside those five lines and whether installation is one of them.

This article breaks a quote into its components, gives the illustrative share of each, explains why the per-unit figure is the least comparable number in the trade, and ends with a twelve-point request you can send to any supplier — including us — so that the next three quotes you receive can actually be compared.

The Five Lines That Make Up a Window Price

A fabricated window leaves a factory as an assembly of four purchased inputs plus labour: aluminium profile, insulating glass, hardware, and time on the line. Everything else on the invoice is packaging, paperwork or margin.

For a mid-range, double-glazed, thermally broken aluminium unit, an itemised supply-only price usually divides roughly like this:

The shares are illustrative rather than fixed — individual components move by ten points or more between suppliers in the same market. What does not move is the structure: five lines, of which the first four are the product and the fifth is the business around it.

Three of those lines deserve a word, because they are the ones buyers most often misjudge.

Profile is not a commodity. Wall thickness, the design of the thermal break — a polyamide strip or a poured polyurethane bridge — and the surface finish all sit in this line, and a wood-grain transfer finish alone can add 8 to 12 % to it.

Glass carries the widest swing of any single line. The same nominal double-glazed unit, with a Low-E coating, argon instead of air and a warm-edge spacer, can differ by 30 to 40 % on this line against a plain air-filled build — and laminated glass where required pushes it further.

Hardware is where a quote hides most quietly, because the visible part — the handle — tells you almost nothing. The number that matters is the locking points: a three-point lock and a seven-point lock look identical on a photograph and are not the same product.

Why “Unit Price × Number of Windows” Is the Least Comparable Number in the Trade

Take three quotes for the same nominal window, all of them real in the sense that each corresponds to a product someone will actually deliver:

• EUR 260 — supply only, ex-works. Air-filled double glazing, unbranded hardware with three locking points, no inspection report, no shop drawings, fabricated to the dimensions you gave, no installation.
• EUR 410 — supply only, ex-works. Low-E and argon with a warm-edge spacer, branded hardware with five to seven locking points, shop drawings approved before production, sealed sample and a dimensional inspection report, no installation.
• EUR 690 — supplied and installed. The same product as the second, plus removal of the existing unit, sealing, making good of the reveals and removal of waste from site.

The third quote is not 2.65 times better than the first. It contains a different product and a service the other two do not contain at all. Ranking them on unit price is not a comparison; it is an ordering of three different questions.

The per-square-metre version of the same mistake is just as common. A 600 × 700 mm bathroom window and a 3,000 × 2,400 mm sliding door are both “windows”, and the small one can easily cost twice as much per square metre — because the frame perimeter, the hardware set and the handling are costs per unit, not per square metre. Per-square-metre figures are useful for budgeting a project. They are useless for choosing a supplier.

Three Items That Have to Be Written Line by Line

If you ask for one thing from a supplier, ask for these three written out in full.

1. The glass build-up. “Double glazing” is a category, not a specification. What has to appear is the pane thicknesses, the cavity width, whether the cavity is air or argon, which face carries the Low-E coating, and whether the spacer is aluminium or warm-edge. 5 mm + 20 A + 5 mm is a specification; double glazed is not. Our own standard build is the former, and a quote that says only the latter is the first thing to send back.

2. The hardware, by brand and model. “German hardware” names a country, not a product. Ask for brand, model, number of locking points, handle type and hinge or roller type — five fields that can be compared across quotes. This is where the 30 to 40 % hardware spread between suppliers hides, and it is invisible on a photograph.

3. The installation scope, in five sub-questions. If installation is in the price, the price means nothing until you know:

• Are the existing units removed?
• Are the reveals made good and finished, and with what material?
• Is the internal sill or board included?
• Is waste removed from site?
• Is access equipment — scaffold, tower, lift — included, and who arranges it?

Every “no” is a cost that reappears later, usually at a worse price, because by then the window is on site and the wall is open.

How to Recognise a Quote Designed to Be Refused

There is a real practice, described openly by fabricators in buyer forums, of quoting deliberately high on small orders so that the order goes away without anyone having to say no. The version buyers report is worth knowing because the signals are recognisable:

• No breakdown, after being asked twice.
• The exclusions list is longer than the inclusions list.
• Price validity is thirty days, but lead time is “to be confirmed”.
• A deposit is required before anyone measures the openings.
• The price sits 40 % above every other quote, with no explanation of what the extra buys.
• The reply arrives in two hours, and nobody asked a single question about the openings.

That last signal is the most reliable. A genuine price for made-to-measure units requires somebody to read your opening schedule. A number that arrives before anyone has looked at the drawings is a price for a category, not for your job.

None of this means a high quote is dishonest. A 40 % premium can be entirely legitimate — a heavier profile, a better finish, a real inspection regime. The point is narrower: a supplier who will not explain the premium is asking you to buy a number instead of a product, and the same supplier will be equally uninformative when something goes wrong two years later.

A Quote Request You Can Send to Any Supplier

Twelve points. A supplier who answers all twelve is a supplier whose price can be compared. One who answers six and ignores six has told you something useful as well.

1. Opening sizes in millimetres, width × height, measured — with a sketch or photograph of each opening.
2. Quantity per size, and the total number of units.
3. Opening style for each unit: inward, outward, sliding, top-hung.
4. Glass make-up, including coating face, cavity gas and spacer type.
5. Hardware brand and model, or the words “equivalent approved”.
6. Finish: powder coat with an RAL number, PVDF, or wood-grain transfer.
7. Target U-value, and whether it is a whole-unit or a centre-of-glass figure.
8. Whether the price includes installation, and if so exactly which of the five sub-questions above are covered.
9. Packing method for export: crate, steel rack, or loose.
10. Lead time, counted from which event — drawing approval, deposit, or order confirmation.
11. Which documents ship with the goods: shop drawings, hardware schedule, inspection report, installation instructions.
12. Whether a single unit can be ordered as a sample, and at what price.

The last point is often the most revealing. A factory that cannot sell you one window at a fair price is a factory that has arranged its process around large orders — which is a legitimate business model, but it means your small project will always be at the back of the queue.

What to Do With the Quote When It Arrives

Read the exclusions before the total. Most of the difference between two quotes lives in that list, not in the price.

Divide by units and by square metres, and look at both. The per-unit figure tells you what the job costs. The per-square-metre figure tells you whether the small units are being priced fairly.

Compare line by line, and only where the lines match. If one quote lists a seven-point lock and another does not mention locking points at all, you have not found a cheaper supplier — you have found a missing line.

Ask for the same quote twice: supply-only, and supply-and-install. The gap between the two is the real price of installation in your market, and it is the number most often guessed wrong.

Ask one more question: if the measured opening differs from the drawing, who pays for the remake? The answer belongs in the order, not in a later argument.

On our side the process is deliberately narrow, so that it can be checked. Send drawings, materials and quantity, and you get manufacturability feedback and an itemised price within one business day. A single unit can be ordered. Before a batch runs we produce a first-article sample with a full dimensional inspection report, and after approval a sealed sample that the batch is measured against. Lead time is 25 to 35 days from shop-drawing approval — that is production time, not door-to-door, and it does not include shipping or installation.

What we cannot do is as worth stating: there is no local installation network behind these units, and no third-party performance certification beyond the ISO 9001 certification of the factories that build them. Both are things a buyer should know before comparing us with a supplier who has them.