Executive Summary
- Manufaktur X's 3D configurator recorded 23,436 completed custom loft door configurations across European markets in May 2026, representing a month-over-month increase of approximately 6.3% versus April 2026 and the highest single-month volume recorded so far in 2026.
- Anthracite and matte black finishes together accounted for over 51% of all colour selections, confirming a sustained structural preference for industrial-toned palettes - though warm white saw the sharpest month-over-month gain, rising 2.1 percentage points.
- Clear float glass remained the dominant glazing choice at 38.4% of configurations, while reeded (fluted) glass posted the strongest growth, up 3.7 percentage points, reflecting a broader European interior trend toward textured surfaces.
- Single-leaf door configurations held the largest share at 44.1%, but double loft door formats grew notably, reaching 29.6% - a gain of 2.9 percentage points versus April - suggesting increasing adoption in open-plan residential and commercial renovation projects.
- The European average configured price in May 2026 stood at EUR 2,148, a rise of EUR 87 compared with April, driven by larger dimension selections and a shift toward premium glass options.
Key Findings
The May 2026 dataset from Manufaktur X's European configurator provides a richly granular picture of how buyers across the continent approach the specification of a made-to-measure loft door. The following findings are drawn directly from 23,436 unique configuration sessions and are compared against April 2026 baseline data.
1. Volume growth is broad-based, not country-specific. The 6.3% rise in total configurations versus April was distributed across all active national stores, with Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and France each recording individual monthly increases. No single country accounted for more than 34% of total European volume, indicating healthy geographic diversification in demand.
2. Anthracite dominates but warm tones are growing. Anthracite grey (RAL 7016) remained the single most-selected colour at 29.3% of all configurations, down a marginal 0.4 percentage points from April. Matte black (RAL 9005) held second position at 21.8%. However, warm white (RAL 9010) recorded the steepest upward movement of any colour, gaining 2.1 percentage points to reach 14.7%, suggesting that a segment of buyers - particularly in Scandinavian and French markets - is moving toward lighter, more residential aesthetics for their custom loft door specifications.
3. Reeded glass is the defining glazing trend of May 2026. Among glass types, reeded (fluted) glass grew from 8.9% in April to 12.6% in May, a gain of 3.7 percentage points. This is the largest single-month movement recorded for any glass category in 2026 to date. Clear float glass remains the workhorse at 38.4%, but the reeded category is clearly transitioning from a niche preference to a mainstream option across the European custom loft door market.
4. Dimensions are trending larger. The most common configured width in May was 900 mm (selected in 22.4% of configurations), consistent with April. However, the 1,000 mm width band grew by 1.6 percentage points to 18.9%, and widths above 1,200 mm - associated with double leaf or wide-single formats - collectively grew by 2.1 percentage points. Standard ceiling heights of 2,050-2,100 mm remain dominant, but configurations specifying heights above 2,400 mm rose by 1.8 percentage points, reflecting a growing appetite for statement-scale industrial loft door installations.
5. Double loft door format is gaining ground rapidly. At 29.6% share, the double loft door format is now approaching parity with single-leaf configurations (44.1%) in terms of trajectory. The pivot loft door style also expanded, reaching 9.3% from 7.8% in April, a gain of 1.5 percentage points - its highest recorded share in the current dataset series.
6. Side-panel and transom additions are a meaningful upsell. Configurations including at least one fixed side panel accounted for 18.7% of all sessions, up 1.2 percentage points. Transom (overhead fixed panel) additions were selected in 8.4% of configurations. Combined, these architectural additions indicate that buyers are treating the loft door not as an isolated product but as part of a larger glazed partition system - a finding consistent with growing interest in the Room Divider product category.
7. Price distribution has shifted upward. The share of configurations priced above EUR 2,500 rose from 21.3% in April to 24.6% in May, while the sub-EUR 1,500 bracket shrank by 1.9 percentage points to 18.2%. This upward migration is consistent with larger dimension selections, premium glass choices and more complex multi-leaf formats.
8. Steel-and-glass remains the overwhelming structural choice. Across all 23,436 configurations, 91.4% specified a steel frame with glass infill panels. Solid-wood framed loft door configurations represented 5.8%, and hybrid steel-with-wood-detail options accounted for 2.8%. These proportions were stable month-over-month, with no movement greater than 0.5 percentage points.
9. Configurator completion rate improved in May. While this report covers only completed and cleaned configurations (see Data Source and Methodology sections below), internal session data indicates that the ratio of completed-to-initiated sessions rose by approximately 4.1 percentage points in May, suggesting that recent UX improvements to the Loft Door configurator are reducing drop-off at the glass-selection and dimension-entry stages.
10. Belgium and Switzerland entered the top five national markets. For the first time in 2026, Belgium and Switzerland each recorded sufficient monthly configuration volume to feature individually in the regional breakdown (see Regional Insights). This reflects both organic market growth and the recent localisation of the configurator interface into French and Swiss German language variants.
Data Source
All figures in this report originate from the Manufaktur X 3D product configurator, which allows prospective buyers to specify a custom loft door in real time - selecting frame colour, glass type, leaf format, dimensions, hardware and additional architectural elements before generating a live price estimate. Configuration sessions are logged automatically upon submission of a completed specification.
For the purposes of this analysis, the dataset was drawn exclusively from sessions completed during the calendar month of May 2026 (00:00 CET on 1 May 2026 through 23:59 CET on 31 May 2026). Records were filtered to include only those configurations originating from Manufaktur X's active European national storefronts. Sessions flagged as internal (staff testing), bot-generated or duplicate within a 24-hour window for the same user identifier were removed. Configurations missing a valid width, height or colour selection were excluded as incomplete. The resulting clean dataset comprises 23,436 individual configuration records.
Methodology
The sample of 23,436 custom loft door configurations forms the entire analytical base for this report. No extrapolation from a sub-sample was necessary; all reported percentages reflect the full cleaned population of May 2026 sessions. Data collection ran continuously across the 31-day period, yielding a daily average of 756 completed configurations.
Segmentation was applied along the following dimensions: frame colour (RAL code groupings), glass type, door format or style, configured width and height (grouped into 50 mm and 100 mm bands respectively), estimated configured price (grouped into EUR 250 bands), and country of the originating national store. Month-over-month comparisons use the April 2026 cleaned dataset (22,047 configurations) as the baseline. Percentage-point changes are reported to one decimal place throughout. Where the term "PP" appears in tables, it denotes percentage points.
Configuration Volume
May 2026 produced 23,436 completed custom loft door configurations across Manufaktur X's European configurator network - the highest monthly total recorded in 2026 and a 6.3% increase on April's 22,047. The 31-day month delivered a daily average of 756 configurations and a weekly average of approximately 5,289. Weekday sessions (Monday through Friday) accounted for 74.3% of total volume, consistent with prior months, while Saturday and Sunday together contributed 25.7% - a figure that has crept up by 1.4 percentage points since January 2026, indicating gradual growth in weekend consumer-driven browsing alongside the historically dominant trade and architect weekday sessions.
The final week of May (25-31 May) was the strongest single week of the month, generating an estimated 6,104 configurations - roughly 26% of the monthly total - a pattern consistent with end-of-month project deadline behaviour observed in previous reporting periods. According to Manufaktur X configurator data, the peak single day in May 2026 was Tuesday, 27 May, with 941 completed configurations recorded.
Top Colours
Frame colour selection is consistently one of the most revealing indicators in the Manufaktur X dataset because it reflects not only aesthetic preference but also the intended installation environment - commercial, residential loft conversion, or hospitality. In May 2026, the colour distribution across 23,436 configurations was as follows.
| Rank | Colour | May 2026 (%) | April 2026 (%) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anthracite Grey (RAL 7016) | 29.3% | 29.7% | -0.4 PP |
| 2 | Matte Black (RAL 9005) | 21.8% | 22.6% | -0.8 PP |
| 3 | Warm White (RAL 9010) | 14.7% | 12.6% | +2.1 PP |
| 4 | Signal White (RAL 9003) | 9.4% | 9.7% | -0.3 PP |
| 5 | Traffic White (RAL 9016) | 6.2% | 5.9% | +0.3 PP |
| 6 | Basalt Grey (RAL 7012) | 5.8% | 6.1% | -0.3 PP |
| 7 | Olive / Sage Green (RAL 6003 / 6021) | 4.3% | 3.6% | +0.7 PP |
| 8 | Bronze / Copper Tones | 3.1% | 3.4% | -0.3 PP |
| 9 | Graphite / Dark Grey (RAL 7024) | 2.9% | 3.0% | -0.1 PP |
| 10 | Custom RAL / Other | 2.5% | 3.4% | -0.9 PP |
The combined share of dark industrial tones (anthracite, matte black, basalt grey and graphite) fell slightly from 61.4% in April to 59.8% in May. While dark finishes remain the defining characteristic of the steel loft door market - and are unlikely to lose their structural majority in the near term - the 2.1 percentage-point gain for warm white is noteworthy. Warm white is the colour of choice when a made-to-measure loft door is intended to complement Scandinavian-influenced or transitional interiors rather than full industrial-loft aesthetics. The olive and sage green cluster also continued its gradual rise, now at 4.3%, consistent with a broader European interior-design movement toward earthy, botanical hues that has been evident in furniture specification data since late 2024.
Top Glass Types
Glass selection is arguably the single most consequential specification decision for a custom loft door, determining privacy, light transmission, acoustic performance and visual style in equal measure. The May 2026 data shows a market in active transition, with textured options growing at the expense of clear glazing.
| Rank | Glass Type | May 2026 (%) | April 2026 (%) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clear Float Glass | 38.4% | 41.2% | -2.8 PP |
| 2 | Reeded / Fluted Glass | 12.6% | 8.9% | +3.7 PP |
| 3 | Frosted / Satin Glass | 11.8% | 12.4% | -0.6 PP |
| 4 | Clear Tempered (Safety) Glass | 11.3% | 11.9% | -0.6 PP |
| 5 | Wire / Mesh Glass (Vintage) | 8.7% | 8.4% | +0.3 PP |
| 6 | Smoked / Bronze Tinted Glass | 6.9% | 6.2% | +0.7 PP |
| 7 | Lacobel / Back-Painted Glass | 4.8% | 5.1% | -0.3 PP |
| 8 | Insulated Double Glazing (DGU) | 3.2% | 3.6% | -0.4 PP |
| 9 | No Glass (Solid Panel) | 2.3% | 2.3% | 0.0 PP |
Clear float glass lost 2.8 percentage points in a single month - the sharpest decline observed for this category in 2026. The beneficiary is primarily reeded glass, which at 12.6% has now overtaken frosted/satin glass to claim second position in the ranking for the first time. Reeded glass diffuses light while retaining a sense of openness and pairs well with both dark industrial frames and lighter painted finishes, which likely explains its cross-segment appeal. Smoked and bronze tinted glass also gained 0.7 percentage points, consistent with the growing interest in warm, characterful aesthetics noted in the colour data.
Wire glass - the classic vintage industrial loft door glass type - held at 8.7%, continuing its slow but steady recovery from a dip in early 2026. Insulated double glazing (DGU) configurations, relevant primarily for external or cold-zone applications, remained a small but stable segment at 3.2%.
Top Dimensions
Made-to-measure loft doors by definition span a wide range of dimensions, but configurator data consistently reveals clusters of preferred sizes that reflect standard European construction dimensions and common residential opening widths.
| Rank | Width (mm) | May 2026 (%) | April 2026 (%) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 900 | 22.4% | 22.8% | -0.4 PP |
| 2 | 1,000 | 18.9% | 17.3% | +1.6 PP |
| 3 | 800 | 14.6% | 15.1% | -0.5 PP |
| 4 | 1,100 | 9.8% | 9.2% | +0.6 PP |
| 5 | 1,200+ | 11.3% | 9.2% | +2.1 PP |
| 6 | 750 | 8.4% | 9.0% | -0.6 PP |
| 7 | Other / Non-standard | 14.6% | 17.4% | -2.8 PP |
| Rank | Height (mm) | May 2026 (%) | April 2026 (%) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,050 - 2,100 | 34.7% | 36.2% | -1.5 PP |
| 2 | 2,200 | 19.3% | 18.7% | +0.6 PP |
| 3 | 2,400 | 13.8% | 12.9% | +0.9 PP |
| 4 | 2,500+ | 9.6% | 7.8% | +1.8 PP |
| 5 | 2,000 and under | 10.4% | 11.3% | -0.9 PP |
| 6 | Other / Custom | 12.2% | 13.1% | -0.9 PP |
The 900 mm width remains the most frequently specified dimension for a custom loft door, corresponding to the most common residential doorway width in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. However, the most significant movement in May was the growth in configurations specifying 1,200 mm or wider, up 2.1 percentage points to 11.3%. This band is almost exclusively associated with wide-single or double loft door formats and points to growing adoption in open-plan spaces where a standard-width opening has been widened as part of a renovation project.
On the height axis, the dominant 2,050-2,100 mm band lost 1.5 percentage points, while heights of 2,400 mm and above collectively gained 2.7 percentage points. The trend toward taller doors aligns with architectural preferences in high-ceiling loft conversions and new-build apartment projects with elevated floor-to-ceiling dimensions, particularly in urban markets in France and the Netherlands.
Top Styles
Style - meaning the opening mechanism and leaf configuration of the industrial loft door - is a primary structural decision that influences everything from hardware selection to glass area and price.
| Rank | Style / Format | May 2026 (%) | April 2026 (%) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Single Leaf (Hinged) | 44.1% | 45.8% | -1.7 PP |
| 2 | Double Loft Door (French / Bi-Leaf) | 29.6% | 26.7% | +2.9 PP |
| 3 | Single + Fixed Side Panel | 10.4% | 10.1% | +0.3 PP |
| 4 | Pivot Loft Door | 9.3% | 7.8% | +1.5 PP |
| 5 | Double + Side Panel(s) | 4.3% | 6.9% | -2.6 PP |
| 6 | Single + Transom Panel | 2.3% | 2.7% | -0.4 PP |
The double loft door format's gain of 2.9 percentage points to 29.6% is the most consequential style-level shift in May. This format - two hinged glass-and-steel leaves meeting at the centre - is increasingly specified for kitchen-to-living-room openings in residential renovations and for conference or meeting room entrances in commercial fit-outs. The pivot loft door, which uses an off-centre pivot hinge mechanism to create a dramatic, wide swing, grew from 7.8% to 9.3% - a 1.5 PP increase that represents its strongest month in 2026 and reflects the growing appetite for statement architectural hardware in premium residential projects.
Interestingly, the double-plus-side-panel configuration fell 2.6 percentage points, the sharpest style-level decline of the month. This may reflect buyers preferring to configure the door and any fixed panels as separate products - for example, combining a double loft door with a standalone Room Divider panel rather than a single complex configuration.
Average Price Analysis
Pricing data is derived from the configured price generated by the Manufaktur X configurator at the point of session completion. It reflects the made-to-measure loft door as specified - including frame, glass, hardware and any additional panels - but excludes delivery and installation.
| Metric | May 2026 | April 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average Configured Price | EUR 2,148 | EUR 2,061 | +EUR 87 |
| Median Configured Price | EUR 1,890 | EUR 1,820 | +EUR 70 |
| Most Common Price Band | EUR 1,750 - 2,000 | EUR 1,500 - 1,750 | Shifted up one band |
| Highest Configured Price (single session) | EUR 7,840 | EUR 6,920 | +EUR 920 |
| Lowest Configured Price (clean session) | EUR 680 | EUR 650 | +EUR 30 |
The EUR 87 rise in average configured price is consistent with the dimension and style trends already described: larger openings, more frequent selection of premium glass types such as reeded and smoked glass, and the growing share of double loft door configurations all contribute to a higher average ticket. The median price of EUR 1,890 sits comfortably within the EUR 1,750-2,000 band, which became the modal price bracket in May - shifting up from the EUR 1,500-1,750 band that was modal in April.
The highest individual configuration price of EUR 7,840 was associated with a wide-format double pivot door with insulated double glazing, bespoke bronze powder-coat finish and integrated door handles, representing the very top of the Manufaktur X custom loft door specification range. The lowest valid configuration at EUR 680 reflects a narrow single-leaf door in a standard width with clear float glass and a standard RAL colour - the entry-level specification for this product category.
Regional Insights
Germany remained the largest single national market in May 2026, accounting for 33.6% of all European configurations - a marginal decline of 0.8 percentage points from April. German buyers showed the strongest preference for anthracite grey (32.1% of German configurations) and for standard 900 mm widths, reflecting the prevalence of existing residential doorway dimensions in German construction stock. The double loft door format is growing faster in Germany than the European average, up 3.4 percentage points month-over-month.
Austria, while a smaller market at approximately 9.2% of European volume, showed a notably higher-than-average share of pivot loft door configurations (14.7% versus the European average of 9.3%), suggesting a premium-oriented buyer profile concentrated in Vienna's luxury residential renovation segment.
The Netherlands contributed approximately 14.8% of total volume and is the strongest market for reeded glass, where it reached 18.3% of Dutch configurations - well above the European average of 12.6%. Dutch buyers also indexed highest for configurations over 2,400 mm in height, consistent with the taller floor-to-ceiling dimensions typical of Dutch canal-house and new-build apartment construction.
France accounted for roughly 12.4% of European volume. French configurations showed the highest share of warm white finishes (19.6% of French configurations versus 14.7% European average), and French buyers were most likely to select frosted or satin glass, consistent with a preference for privacy-oriented interior design. The French market also recorded the highest average configured price at EUR 2,347, above the European average of EUR 2,148.
Belgium and Switzerland, newly featured in the regional analysis, contributed 4.7% and 3.8% of total volume respectively. Belgian configurations mirrored broader European averages closely. Swiss configurations stood out for a high share of double-glazed (DGU) options at 7.9% - nearly 2.5 times the European average - reflecting Switzerland's colder climate and energy-efficiency requirements in building regulations.
The United Kingdom, accessing Manufaktur X's English-language European store, represented approximately 8.3% of configurations. UK buyers showed a relatively higher preference for black (RAL 9005) over anthracite,