We can manufacture all types of access panels to suit your exact project requirements.
Every project comes with its own challenges, and standard sizes don’t always deliver the right fit. Our bespoke access solutions are made to order, giving you complete flexibility over size, specification, and finish.
Whether you need non-standard dimensions, specific fire or acoustic ratings, or a panel or door tailored to integrate seamlessly into your space, we can manufacture a solution that meets your exact requirements without compromising on performance or compliance.
Stock panels are made in stock sizes because most openings are formed to suit them. This part of the range exists for the openings that were not.
Three situations account for most of the made to measure orders we take. The first is an opening that already exists and cannot move, a hole cut years ago during a refurbishment, a gap that landed wherever the studs or joists happened to fall, a recess in an older building where nobody is going to rebuild a wall around a catalogue dimension. The second is a wall or ceiling built around services that were already there, so the panel has to clear a pipe run or a valve instead of sitting on a tidy grid. The third has nothing to do with dimensions at all. The opening is perfectly ordinary, but the specification calls for acoustic, airtight or tiled performance that the stock range does not offer at the size wanted.
It is worth pricing the bespoke route before assuming it is the expensive one. A made to measure access panel is priced from the size and specification you choose, and it sits inside the band that stocked metal panels already occupy, so for most jobs the decision turns on fit and specification rather than on budget.
Everything in this category is built to dimensions you supply rather than picked off a shelf, and the main lines are priced through a configurator on their own product page, so you can see a figure before committing to anything.
Prices rise with size and with the options you add, so the product page is the place to read them rather than a category summary. Where a line has a configurator, that page is the quickest route to a real number for the opening in front of you, and where it does not, the fastest route is to send us the dimensions.
Two of these lines also sit inside ranges you may already know, the metal door panels and the FlipFix plasterboard panels, and what the made to measure route changes is the size. The tiled and riser door lines are different in kind, because what you configure on them is the finish and the shaft rather than the aperture on its own.
The general purpose line, a metal door built to the size of your opening. This is the one to choose when the only problem is that no stock size fits, with no acoustic, airtight or tiled performance attached to the requirement.
A plasterboard faced door on a beaded frame, sized to your opening and made to be finished into the surrounding surface, so the panel reads as part of the wall or ceiling rather than as a fitting on it. Part of our FlipFix access panels range.
A door made to receive your own tile, so the access point disappears into a tiled wall or floor. Specify it through the custom tiled access panel configurator, giving the opening size along with the tile you are working with.
For shaft openings that no stock door covers. Our riser doors range explains the subject in full, and if the shaft in question is a dry riser, see dry riser cabinets as well.
Sized to the opening between the joists rather than to a catalogue figure, which matters most in older properties and in conversions where the trimmed opening was never set out to suit a standard hatch. See also our loft hatches.
Some of what sits in this category is bespoke by specification rather than by dimension.
An acoustic rated access panel with a picture frame is listed at 30dB. It belongs wherever a partition was built to hold sound back, between flats, around a plant room, either side of a meeting room, and where cutting an unrated hole into it would quietly undo the work the wall was built to do.
An airtight access panel with a picture frame is the line to reach for where the fabric has an air permeability target and every penetration through it is being counted.
One panel does both jobs and adds fire performance. It is listed as 1 hour fire rated, airtight, smoke tested and 30dB acoustic, with a picture frame. That combination comes up more often in residential blocks than the schedules suggest, wherever a single wall is a compartment line, an acoustic separation and part of the airtightness line all at once.
Round openings are covered by two 1 hour fire rated circular panels, a metal door with picture frame and a plasterboard faced door with beaded frame. Both are FlipFix, and both are set out on our circular access panels page.
Up to 120 minutes fire rated in a wall and 60 minutes in a ceiling. We can powder coat to any RAL colour specified. Multiple locking mechanisms available for quick or high security access. An anti-bacterial coating is available for places with a higher risk of growing and spreading germs. A slimfit 27mm deep frame is useful for when cavity space is restricted. Manufacturing for over 15 years, we’re able to create access panels in all shapes and sizes, including shallow, perforated door, circular and tiled formats.
Getting the measurement right is the part that saves the most time later.
Measure the structural opening, meaning the actual hole in the board or the masonry. Do not measure the visible edge of a finished aperture, and do not measure the panel you are taking out. Take width and height at more than one point, because an opening cut by hand is rarely square, and give us the smallest reading of each. Do not make your own allowance for clearance before sending the figures through. We work from the opening dimension you supply, so an adjustment you have already applied yourself ends up being counted twice.
Alongside the size, tell us four things. Which surface the panel goes into and how it is being finished, since that drives the choice between a frame that sits on the face and a frame that keys into plaster. Whether the position is a wall or a ceiling. What is behind the panel, and how often someone genuinely needs to reach it. And any rating written into the specification, whether fire, acoustic or airtightness, together with where it is written, because that settles the line before anything else does. Our fire rated access panels range covers the rated stock options, in case bespoke turns out to be unnecessary.
If a configurator covers your requirement it will price it directly. If it does not, send the dimensions and the specification through our quote form and we will come back to you.
Tell us what you need and we’ll get back to you quickly with pricing and product recommendations to match your project requirements.
From hospitals and schools to hotels and housing, our panels are specified wherever building services need clean, secure access.
projects in this sector
of new builds need a loft hatch
Enjoy the assurance of top quality with every purchase at Access Panels Direct. Our products, including a wide range of access panels available, offer numerous advantages.
