Types of windows: Plastic, wood, or aluminum? Recommendations/experiences?

We are at odds with plastic – hence my aversion by now...

A large German sectional door manufacturer also once (briefly from 2008-x) thought they had to fulfill customers' color wishes with foil wrapping. The brochure speaks of long-term stability and colorfastness... I would have loved to throw our garage door at that marketing person!

On our sectional door in window gray color, the foil peeled off after just under 5 years (after the warranty period)... The door was also from 2009.

Generously speaking, however, the manufacturer replaced the entire door (double garage!) with a new one with proper painting. Cost was only the service fee of just under 300€. More than fair!

When it comes to plastic / foils etc., I am now a burned child.

Therefore, in my opinion, windows in dark colors should only be wood-aluminum. A paint job is something completely different from this plastic foil trend.

A small manufacturer near us no longer produces its plastic windows with foil wrapping but exclusively with colored acrylic plastic because they had numerous problems with foil wrapping among customers... Whether this is purchased from large profile manufacturers or developed in-house I cannot say....

The plastic on the outside will discolor over the years, the plasticizer will leach out, then it will become brittle.

What purpose are plasticizers supposed to serve in windows?

What purpose are plasticizers supposed to serve in windows?

Are those really plasticizers? I rather suspect silicone-based paints in the laminates... Here the color fades over time... Our basalt gray (7016) is now somewhere between basalt gray and window gray (700x). The windows are only 9 years old... How the color will look after 20 years... we are curious... If we had been told that back then, we would have either chosen white plastic windows or wood-aluminum painted ones. The price would have been worth it to us. The wood look on the inside is also quite pleasant...

That was in the past, with good quality nothing becomes brittle or discolored anymore, only with inferior quality

Our basalt gray (7016)

That would be RAL 7012

What purpose are plasticizers supposed to serve in windows?

That the material becomes brittle more slowly than without.

Just "for the sake of completeness": there are also plastic windows that are coated instead of foiled (from Gealan), and aluminum windows can also be foiled (for example, if a wood decor is desired on the inside).

I have managed a manufacturing company for aluminum windows and still need reading glasses to qualitatively identify a plastic window from a reputable manufacturer and younger than three years as "not aluminum." The long-lasting material quality of aluminum pays off, but late, and it has a premium price that does not make it everyone's favorite. For high stress (front door, especially in multi-family houses) or large formats (lift-and-slide door 4m wide, for example), I would take nothing else. But I understand every builder who sympathizes with the roughly 20% lower price of plastic, where it is "only" about windows of normal formats.

Wood/aluminum is inherently (basically a complete wooden window with an aluminum shell on top) the most expensive—but above all a material combination that is not quite trivial (which has to do with different coefficients of expansion).

In our latitudes, plastic can certainly be used; I have not heard of warping (except with very large formats); however, in Egypt, plastic windows are indeed not popular due to temperature reasons.