This is sort of what I am trying to achieve - white timber windows ( double hung with no bars in them though) and black feature doors. My living floor plan is attached. The doors in question will open from the dining to the alfresco areas. Are black sliders here too much / do they match the white wooden windows everywhere else? Thanks

Consider your household, and who will be using the door. I am assuming you will be getting a pool safety fence between the door and the pool. Tall bi-fold doors can be heavy for kids (and some small adults) to use. The sliding doors are probably the easiest to open and close if you are going to be in and out a lot. Bi-fold doors can crush little fingers if a child tries to close the door from the hinge point. Consider how much of the outlook you will be loosing with the frame for each of your bi-fold panels. With a sliding door you only have one interruption of the view if you have one fixed panel and one sliding panel. You may also like to consider flyscreening and the costs. Flyscreening a bi-fold door is much more expensive with the sideways retracting flyscreens, than a standard sliding flyscreen for a sliding door. I am not sure if you can retrofit a flyscreen to a bi-fold door in a a neat and tidy manner. Cheapest option would be no flyscreening! Bi-fold doors look spectacular for a photoshoot when they are fully open (with no flyscreening), but for day-to day practicality I don't think you can beat the ease of a large glazed sliding door, which will give you a better view of your nice aspect on those days when it is closed. Best of luck, Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls

Dr Retro's analogy with a convertible are so true. We elected to wait 12months in our recent house purchase before embarking on major renovations. The magnificent view that we thought we needed to have stacker/bifold doors for turned out to be too breezy to have the doors open for more than a few days a year. So the extra wide mullions associated with this kind of door would be impacting the view for 99% of the time. In the end we went for extra wide sliding doors (3 for a 4.6m width) with the narrowest mullions we could find. As for your quandary re the corner post, how about a very small section solid stainless steel post? Along the lines of Miles van der Roh's Barcelona Pavilion?

Thanks for your help so far.. I have had some chats with the builder, he said it's not prefarable to remove the top section and put window to match others, as you'll be spending alot more money doing that on something that you may be able to cover and not notice. I woke up this morning with an idea. What about if I move the front door to meet the middle of the porch (this has been something commented on before on here, how the door is really tucked away and not noticeable enough) , do some panelling or rendering in a dark blue/charcoal colour. Then use that same effect where the sliding door is surrounding it, including to the top. I have done a little mock up so present my ideas... I could even do the same on the front window to carry the theme, or that might be overkill, i think it probably is..... Rendering would obviously be the easiest, or even just painting those sections of the brick... Don't want it to look too higgledypiggledy.