Charleston Window Pros: Window, Door and Glass Replacement Across the SC Lowcountry
Residential and commercial window, door and glass work in Charleston, South Carolina. Free measured quote, and a written note on which elevations the Board of Architectural Review can actually see.
- ✓Licensed for both halves of the work: residential building and the Glass and Glazing classification for commercial
- ✓Every quote arrives with a numbered window schedule covering all four elevations
- ✓Insured, with the certificate issued to you directly by the carrier
- ✓Free measured quote, including a written note on which openings the Board will never see
Charleston Window Pros replaces and repairs windows, patio doors, entry doors, screens and sealed glass units across Charleston, South Carolina and the surrounding Lowcountry. We quote wood, clad-wood, fiberglass, aluminum and steel frames, sash repair on original openings, laminated and impact glazing, and storefront glass for commercial buildings, on houses from the 1740s to last year.
The unusual part of working here is that one house can need two different products. The Board of Architectural Review's purview runs on visibility from a public right-of-way, and the material it will accept is set by which district your parcel sits in and how old the building is. A street elevation and a rear elevation are separate decisions, and pricing them as one number hides the cheaper half.
So the estimate is built opening by opening rather than as a house price. Every quote comes with a window schedule, all four elevations photographed and each opening numbered, showing what is proposed where and why. Off the peninsula, in Goose Creek, Hanahan, Ladson and the Summerville tracts, none of that applies, and the quote is simply a quote for product, labor and a permit.
Why Charleston Chooses Charleston Window Pros
- ✓We quote elevation by elevation, because the Board's purview is visibility from a public right-of-way and the back of a Charleston house is frequently a different product from the front
- ✓Your address gets placed in the district and building-age matrix the BAR adopted in December 2025 before any brand name is spoken, so you learn what is approvable before you learn what it costs
- ✓We will tell you when the wind code is satisfied by protecting the opening instead of replacing the glass, which on an original sash is usually both cheaper and far easier to get approved
- ✓No vinyl quoted where the policy forbids it, and no relabelling a vinyl-cored product as composite to try to slip it past staff
- ✓Repair-versus-replacement documented with photographs and a written schedule, because the policy requires evidence and staff can ask for a site visit before deciding
- ✓Hardware specified separately from the unit, since a harbor-facing elevation and a walled courtyard elevation on the same house do not corrode on the same timetable
About Charleston Window Pros in Charleston, SC
Charleston Window Pros works the whole Lowcountry, but the company was built around a peculiarity of this city: the same house can legitimately need two different windows, because the Board of Architectural Review's authority follows sightlines from the public right-of-way rather than property lines. Everything we do starts by drawing that line on paper before anyone talks about a brand.
That means the estimate is organized by elevation and by opening, not by house. It means we produce the window schedule and the repair photographs the adopted policy asks for rather than leaving a homeowner to assemble them. And it means we quote the cheap fix first when the cheap fix is the right one, which on original Charleston sash it usually is.
Do not hire us if you want a single price for twenty-two identical windows and no paperwork. On a peninsula address that quote is a fiction and always has been, and anyone who hands it to you has not read the policy. If you are outside the districts and you want a straight product-and-labour number with no review at all, say so, and that is exactly what you will get.
Our Window Services in Charleston, SC
Energy-Efficient Windows and Storm Panels
The Board of Architectural Review says the quiet part out loud in its own adopted policy: most energy loss in an old building goes through the walls, not the glass. That one line reorders the work on a peninsula house, and it saves people a great deal of money.
Vinyl Windows
This is the page where we talk you out of the product, across half of this city. The BAR's adopted window policy contains four words with no wriggle room: no vinyl or vinyl components.
Fiberglass and Fiberglass-Clad Windows
Fiberglass is the most misunderstood frame in this market, because where it is allowed is not where people assume. The BAR's district and age matrix does not treat it as a universal upgrade.
Wood and Clad-Wood Windows
This is the frame the districts are written around, and the vocabulary matters more than the brand. The policy distinguishes three grid types and treats them as different products.
Aluminum and Steel Windows
Aluminum and steel occupy an odd position here. Elsewhere in the fleet these are the frames people are talked out of.
Double-Hung Sash Windows
The double-hung is the default window of this city and the one we are asked about most. It is also the one where the gap between a repair and a replacement is widest, which is exactly why the adopted policy requires evidence before it will accept the second.
Casement and Awning Windows
Casements seal better than anything else you can buy. The sash pulls into a compression gasket all the way round, so air infiltration numbers are the best in the catalog.
Sliding and Gliding Windows
Sliders are the honest workhorse of the elevations nobody photographs. They are cheap, they are wide, they open without swing clearance, and there is almost nowhere in a Charleston historic district where one is going on a face the public can see.
Bay and Bow Windows
A bay or a bow is not a window in any meaningful sense. It is a miniature addition that happens to be glazed, and that governs how the job runs here, from the review path to the flashing detail to whether we build it at all.
Picture and Architectural Shapes
Fixed glass is the cheapest way to buy a view and the easiest thing to get wrong in a hurricane market. Nothing opens, so no hardware fails and no air leaks, but there is no operable sash to fall back on and the spans get large fast.
Egress Windows for Bedrooms
Egress is arithmetic, not opinion, and it is the one part of a window quote nobody gets to negotiate. Bedrooms have to carry an opening a firefighter can come through and an occupant can get out of, and those figures derail more replacement jobs here than anything else.
Impact Glazing and Opening Protection
This is the page where the two authorities in this city collide, and where our recommendation departs furthest from what you will be told elsewhere. The short version: the code requires the opening to be protected.
Patio and Sliding Glass Doors
A patio door is the heaviest moving object in a house and the one most people ignore until it stops moving. It also sits where Charleston's two hazards meet: a large glazed opening in a wind zone, and a threshold at the base of a wall in a flood-prone city.
French and Piazza Doors
French doors belong to Charleston in a way they do not to most American cities, because the building type demands them. The single house turns its narrow end to the street and runs a piazza down its long flank, and the rooms open onto it through glazed doors.
Entry Doors and Sidelights
Charleston has a front door problem that exists almost nowhere else, and it confuses every out-of-town supplier. On a single house the door facing the street does not open into the house.
Window Screens and Shutter Clearance
Screens are the cheapest thing we sell and the one people put off longest, which is odd in a city where the insect season runs most of the year and where the marsh produces something small enough to walk straight through a standard mesh without slowing down. Start with the mesh, because it decides everything else.
Glass Repair and Sealed Unit Replacement
Most calls that begin as a window replacement should end as a glass repair, and this page exists to make that easy to ask for. A failed seal, a cracked lite or a broken pane is a component fault, not grounds for replacing a working frame.
Commercial Storefront Glass
Commercial glazing is a different license, a different board and a different order of operations from residential work, and treating it as a bigger version of a house is how downtown storefront projects end up months late and thousands over. The license first.
Storefront glass, curtain wall and commercial glazing across Charleston, SC
Commercial glazing in South Carolina is a separate license from residential work: the Contractor's Licensing Board's Glass and Glazing classification under Section 40-11-410 is the one that names curtain wall systems, mall fronts and architectural window systems, and a contractor's license is required once total construction cost passes ten thousand dollars.
In Charleston there is a second layer on top of that. King Street, Meeting Street, East Bay and the Historic Corridor Districts sit under the Board of Architectural Review, and commercial-scale work is generally heard by BAR-Large rather than staff.
A storefront replacement downtown is therefore two submissions and one order, in that sequence, and getting the sequence wrong is what turns a four-week job into a four-month one.
- ✓Storefront systems: 1-3/4 and 2-inch center-set and offset framing, thermally broken where the code path requires it
- ✓Curtain wall and window wall repair, gasket replacement and structural silicone re-glazing
- ✓Tempered, laminated and heat-strengthened replacement lites cut and set from a template
- ✓Insulated units for existing frames, measured to the pocket rather than to the old glass
- ✓All-glass entrances, patch fittings, closers, pivots and panic hardware
- ✓Board-of-Architectural-Review submissions for storefronts inside the Old City and Corridor districts
- ✓Anodized and AAMA 2605 fluoropolymer finishes specified for salt exposure near the harbor
- ✓Board-up and emergency lite replacement after storm or break-in, measured the same day
Recent Projects Across the South Carolina Lowcountry
How It Works
- Locate the parcel in the district and age matrix. Before any product is named we establish whether the address sits in the Old and Historic District, the Old City District, a Historic Corridor, the Landmark Overlay or none of them, and whether the building is fifty years old or older. Those two facts alone decide whether wood with true divided lites is the only option or whether clad frames are on the table.
- Walk the right-of-way and mark what is visible. We stand in the street and in any lane, alley or public way that touches the property, and we photograph what can be seen from each. The elevations that are visible get one specification. The elevations that are not get a second, usually cheaper one. That line is drawn on paper before a single price is written.
- Build the window schedule and the repair evidence. The adopted policy requires evidence for replacement over repair, so we produce it: a numbered schedule of every opening across all four elevations, close photographs of rot, racked joints, failed sills and broken cords, and a plain note on which sash we think can be saved. Staff can and do ask for a site visit.
- Submit, then order, then install. Nothing is ordered until the approval path is settled, because a made-to-order sash with the wrong muntin profile is not returnable. Once the paperwork is done we set the units, flash the sills, tune the hardware and hand over the schedule marked up with what was actually installed in each opening.
What Charleston Customers Say
We had two quotes for the whole house at one number and no mention of review. These guys came out, walked the lane behind us, and showed us that four openings were visible from it and eleven were not. The eleven got a clad unit, the four got repaired sash and a storm panel. Total came in under both of the other quotes.
Straightforward job, no review, no drama. They measured every opening rather than assuming the builder used one size, which turned out to matter on the two upstairs bedrooms. Egress numbers were written on the quote. Installed in a day and a half and cleaned up the mulch bed afterwards.
Called about condensation between the panes on eight windows and expected to be sold a whole-house replacement. They swapped the sealed units in the existing frames and replaced two failed balances. About a quarter of what I had braced for. They also told me which two frames really are near the end and to budget for those.
Salt eats hardware out here and every previous installer ignored it. This crew specified the rollers and fasteners as a separate line item and explained why the ocean side and the marsh side of the house were getting different parts. Sliders still run with one finger after two seasons.
Service Areas
Charleston Window Pros serves Charleston, SC and surrounding communities including:
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need Board of Architectural Review approval to replace windows in Charleston, SC?
If the building sits in the Old and Historic District, the Old City District, a Historic Corridor District or the Landmark Overlay, then any change visible from a public right-of-way needs approval. The policy statement adopted in December 2025 is explicit that purview runs on visibility from any public right-of-way.
A rear elevation screened by a wall and no lane may fall outside it. Send us the address and we will tell you which of your elevations are in and which are out before you spend anything.
Can I put vinyl windows on a historic Charleston house?
No. The BAR's replacement window policy says plainly: no vinyl or vinyl components. Composite windows, which the policy defines as products containing vinyl or another plastic, are also restricted, and the policy's own FAQ addresses why they are not accepted south of Line Street. Vinyl is a perfectly reasonable window in Ladson or Sangaree. It is not a peninsula product, and no amount of relabelling gets it approved.
Are impact windows required in Charleston, South Carolina?
Opening protection is required, which is not the same thing. The City's published climatic and geographic design criteria put the ultimate design wind speed at 150 mph, which places Charleston in the code's highest residential wind zone. The code lets you satisfy that by glazing that passes the large missile test or by an impact-protective system over the opening. On a historic street elevation the second route is frequently the only one the Board will accept.
Will the Board let me put insulated glass in an old sash?
Often not on a fifty-year-old building in the Old and Historic or Old City districts. The policy's reasoning is dimensional: two panes need a thicker sash and a thicker muntin, which changes the profile, and any change in material, profile or grid pattern requires Board approval. That is why interior storm panels and weatherstripping are the usual energy answer on a reviewed elevation.
How long does the review take, and can staff approve it without a hearing?
Straightforward items such as painting, rot repair and small modifications can be handled at staff level, and those decisions are posted weekly with a fifteen-day appeal window. Anything the policy calls wholesale replacement goes to the Board itself. BAR-Small meets twice a month and hears the residential-scale work; BAR-Large meets monthly and takes the bigger and commercial projects. Plan the order date around the calendar, not the other way round.
Do you work outside the historic districts?
Most of what we do is outside them. Goose Creek, Hanahan, Ladson, Sangaree, Summerville, Moncks Corner and the bulk of Mount Pleasant have no architectural review over windows at all, and there the job is a normal measured quote: pick a frame, pick a glass package, pull the permit, install. We do not charge peninsula prices for a 2003 subdivision, and we do not pretend a review exists where it does not.