A quote says the door is energy efficient. You want to know whether the specific unit you are being sold actually meets anything, and where the number that decides it comes from. Both are answerable, and neither answer is on the brochure.
The short answer
What ENERGY STAR requires of a door depends on how much glass the door has, and for the most-glazed category it also depends on your climate zone. The numbers that decide it belong to the exact configuration you were quoted — that size, that glass package, those grilles — not to the product line in general. They live on the certification label attached to the unit, and in the independent directory behind that label.
Everything below is taken from the ENERGY STAR Program Requirements for Residential Windows, Doors, and Skylights, Version 7.0 final specification, read on 26 September 2026. Where a manufacturer’s summary and the specification differ, the specification is what we publish.
The criteria, in full
This is Table 2 of the specification, reproduced as it actually reads:
| Glazing level | U-factor | SHGC |
|---|---|---|
| Opaque | ≤ 0.17 | No rating required |
| ≤ ½-lite | ≤ 0.23 | ≤ 0.23 |
| > ½-lite — Northern and North-Central | ≤ 0.26 | ≤ 0.40 |
| > ½-lite — South-Central and Southern | ≤ 0.28 | ≤ 0.23 |
Note what the table does not do. Only the > ½-lite row varies by climate zone. Opaque and ≤ ½-lite doors carry single national values — the same everywhere in the United States. If you have been told that door requirements change depending on where you live, that is true for heavily glazed doors and not true for the other two categories.
Air leakage is set separately, and the grouping surprises people:
| Product | Maximum air leakage |
|---|---|
| Window, sliding door, or skylight | ≤ 0.3 cfm/ft² |
| Swinging door | ≤ 0.5 cfm/ft² |
Sliding patio doors are grouped with windows and skylights, not with swinging doors. So if you are weighing a slider against a hinged entry door, they are being measured against different thresholds and a direct comparison of their air-leakage numbers is not the comparison it looks like.
Glazing level: the 900-square-inch line
“Half-lite” sounds like a judgement about appearance. It is not. The specification defines the categories by glazing area, in square inches, and you can measure it:
| Category | Definition, as the specification words it |
|---|---|
| Opaque | “A Door or Sidelite with no glazing (per NFRC 100).” |
| ≤ ½-Lite | “A Door with ≤ 900 in² (0.581 m²) of glazing or a Sidelite ≤ 281 in².” |
| > ½-Lite | “A Door with > 900 in² (0.581 m²) of glazing or a Sidelite with > 281 in².” |
Nine hundred square inches is the whole line. A door with a 30-inch by 20-inch glass panel is at 600 square inches and sits in the ≤ ½-lite category, whatever it looks like from the driveway. Sidelites have their own threshold of 281 square inches and are categorised in their own right.
The specification also defines the product itself, which is worth knowing if you are wondering whether an interior door is in scope: a Door is “a sliding or swinging entry system designed for and installed in a vertical wall separating conditioned and unconditioned space in a Residential Building.”
Which version is current
Version 7.0 took effect on 23 October 2023 — the specification’s own wording is that it “shall take effect October 23, 2023” — and EPA’s specifications index lists it as in effect. Do not confuse that date with 20 October 2022, which is when the document was finalised.
On whether something newer is coming, we will say exactly this much: no Version 8.0 proposal, draft or final specification was found in the ENERGY STAR sources we checked on 27 September 2026 — the specifications index, the residential windows, doors and skylights product page, and the Version 7.0 specification page. We are not going to put it more strongly than that, because we cannot see inside the process and one of the pages that would speak to it was unreachable when we looked.
What we can tell you is the documented reason a 2023 specification is still the live one. The 2026 ENERGY STAR Program Transition Plan records that “EPA has not been engaged in updating specifications since early 2025.” That explains the age of the document. It does not predict when the next one lands, and we are not going to guess.
Finding your climate zone
Only the > ½-lite category needs this, but if your door is heavily glazed you need it precisely. ENERGY STAR’s Climate Zone Finder asks for three things: product, state and county. Not a ZIP code — easy to miss if you are used to entering one. Know your county.
Reading the NFRC label on a door
NFRC publishes an example of a door label and describes it this way: “The circled value shows you the rating a specific door has received based on its glass configuration. Each rating is split into two values: Solar Heat Gain, and U-Factor.”
That sentence contains the single most useful idea on this page: the rating tracks the door’s glass configuration. Change the glass package and you are potentially looking at a different rating, which is why a line-level claim about a product family tells you very little about the unit in your quote.
Two values is what NFRC’s published example shows. It is an example, not a limit. The specification contemplates more: ENERGY STAR V7 §3.C lists, as one compliance option, “Displaying ‘≤ 0.5’ in the Air Leakage portion of the NFRC temporary label” for swinging doors, and the equivalent “≤ 0.3” for windows, sliding doors and skylights. So a door label carrying an air-leakage value is not anomalous, and a label showing just those two is not deficient. Do not read either way into it.
On the values themselves, in NFRC’s terms: U-factor “measures how well a product keeps heat from escaping a room”, on a range of “0.00-2.00”, and lower is better. Solar heat gain coefficient describes how much solar heat comes through. NFRC names five label ratings in general — U-factor, visible transmittance, SHGC, air leakage and condensation resistance — but that is the general set for fenestration products, not a promise about what any particular door’s label will show.
If the label is missing
A certified product should arrive carrying its required labels: the temporary label, which is the sticker with the rated values on it, and the permanent label on the unit itself.
NFRC is direct about what a missing temporary label means. Its fact sheet on permanent and temporary labels states: “If the temporary label is missing, the product is considered not certified, whether it is authorized for certification or not.” Its consumer FAQ puts the same point in plainer words: “If the product does not have a sticker on it, it is not considered a certified window (regardless of whether it is certified or not).”
That is about a unit that turns up without its label. It is a reason to raise the problem at delivery, before the door goes in, rather than after. NFRC’s FAQ on what to do: “Labels CANNOT be e-mailed, faxed, or sent separately from the window. If they are missing, contact NFRC. In certain cases, the manufacturer may be required to do on-site labeling.”
It is not about you peeling the sticker off your own door after it is installed. NFRC’s FAQ treats removal by the owner as completely ordinary — its only entry on the subject is advice on getting the adhesive residue off the glass. Nothing we found says or implies that an owner who removes the label has decertified their door, and no retroactive decertification should be inferred either way. So: check the label at delivery, and photograph it before it comes off. That photograph is the single most useful thing you can do for yourself here, and it belongs with the documents listed in our warranty guide.
One further provision exists, and it is worth knowing about without over-promising it. NFRC documents a Fenestration Manufacturer Certificate (FMC) — a provision on the manufacturer’s side, not a form you fill in. NFRC’s fact sheet on it says NFRC “has created a provision that allows a manufacturer to reprint the temporary label in individual product situations or use a Fenestration Manufacturers Certificate (FMC)”, and that the FMC “allows the manufacturer to state the original performance of the product and glazing option and supply the certificate upon request from a responsible party (i.e., building code official, builder, or homeowner).” A homeowner is named there explicitly.
Two honest caveats travel with that. The fact sheet carries no date, so we cannot tell you how current it is. And NFRC’s own live consumer FAQ does not mention the FMC at all — it points a reader with missing labels at contacting NFRC, and at on-site labelling. Both routes exist in NFRC’s published material; we are not going to tell you which one will work for you, what it costs, how long it takes, or that you are entitled to it, because none of that is documented in what we could read.
Verifying a quoted door in the NFRC directory
If you have a label, or a photograph of one, you can check it yourself in a couple of minutes.
- Open the directory NFRC links from its own site: search.nfrc.org/search/searchDefault.aspx
- Choose Label Verification — NFRC describes it as “Verify the ratings shown on an NFRC labeled product”.
- Set Product Type to Door.
- Enter the U-Factor, SHGC and VT from the label, with decimal points. NFRC’s own instruction: “If the label you are entering is missing a U-Factor, SHGC, or VT value, enter a ‘–’.”
- Optionally narrow by manufacturer.
One line from the search hub explains a lookup that returns nothing: “Only products with a current certification will appear in this search.” An older door, or a discontinued configuration, may simply not be there, and that is not by itself evidence of anything wrong.
If you have a CPD number instead of a label, the format is “AAA-X-11-01234-01234”. And if you want to see how doors are classified in the directory, NFRC’s Certified Products Directory Codes Listing dated 23 January 2026 gives DDSG for a sliding patio door, EDSL for a single swinging entrance door, DDFR for a double, FXSL for a sidelite and FXTR for a transom.
One limitation worth knowing before you go looking: the detailed search form filters on U-factor, SHGC and VT, plus an ENERGY STAR products checkbox. There is no filter for air leakage or condensation resistance, so you cannot search on those.
Where exact-configuration numbers actually live
Manufacturers do publish door performance data, and knowing where to look saves a lot of arguing.
Andersen publishes total-unit NFRC tables that include patio-door rows, headed “Andersen® NFRC Certified Total Unit Performance – Dual-Pane Glass”, with columns for product, glass type, U-factor, SHGC and VT. Its own footnote defines the measure: “U-Factor defines the amount of heat loss through the total unit”. Read the currency note on whichever document you open — the A-Series document states “This data is accurate as of November 2022.”, while the 400 Series equivalent states December 2024.
Pella publishes door total-unit values with CPD numbers in its Architectural Design Manual — for example the Lifestyle Series in-swing door table headed “Glazing Performance – Total Unit”, noting that “Glazing performance values are calculated based on NFRC 100, NFRC 200 and NFRC 500.”
In the Marvin and JELD-WEN documents we checked, no numeric door U-factor or SHGC appeared — Marvin’s door sections gave sound ratings only. That is a statement about the documents we opened, not about everything those companies publish.
Three things to carry away from this, because they are where readers get caught:
- Total unit is not centre of glass. Andersen splits these into separate documents, and its centre-of-glass document has no U-factor column at all. A centre-of-glass figure is not the number the criteria are compared against, and quoting one as if it were makes a door look better than it rates.
- Published tables are dated and conditional. Andersen prints, on the table itself, that “Values are for single units with given pane thickness and 3/4" (19 mm) grilles for windows and 1" (25 mm) grilles for door products.” and that “Ratings may vary depending on use of tempered glass, different grille options, glass with capillary breather tubes for high altitudes, etc.” A table is a starting point, not the rating of the unit in your quote.
- The authority for a specific unit is its label or its directory entry. Which is what the previous section is for.
What to ask for
- The NFRC-labelled U-factor and SHGC for the exact configuration quoted — that size, that glass package, those grilles.
- The CPD number, if there is one.
- Confirmation that the door qualifies for your climate zone, if it is a heavily glazed door.
- Whether any figure supplied is total unit or centre of glass.
- That the labels are on the unit at delivery.
Who runs ENERGY STAR now
A transition plan was finalised on 28 August 2026 to move ENERGY STAR leadership from EPA to the Department of Energy, under a memorandum of agreement dated 3 March 2026. The transfer is in progress, not complete: the plan commits the agencies to “work together to fully complete this transition no more than twelve months after the finalization of this plan”, with IT migration “by July 2027”. It also states that “DOE will lead future ENERGY STAR program updates and will continue to consult with stakeholders as needed.”
On what this means for certification, we will not tell you either that nothing changes or that anything is at risk, because no federal source we read says either. What the plan does say is that the agencies are committed to “efficient continuity of operations for the program with minimal disruption to outside stakeholders”. That is the statement; we are quoting it rather than interpreting it.
Tax credits: where this stands in 2026
The federal energy efficient home improvement credit is not available for a door placed in service after 31 December 2025. The IRS states: “The credit will not be allowed for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025.”, citing Public Law 119-21, 139 Stat. 72 (4 July 2025). While it applied, the limit was $250 per door and $500 total, and the door had to be ENERGY STAR certified for the home’s climate zone.
A door placed in service on or before that date is claimed on that year’s return via Form 5695 — but eligibility was conditional, not automatic. The door had to meet the applicable requirement, and for 2025 the IRS states that no credit is allowed unless the item was produced by a qualified manufacturer, with the QMID reported on the return. One thing worth knowing if you are getting contradictory answers online: ENERGY STAR’s exterior-doors page still reads in the present tense and carries no end-of-credit notice. The IRS page, by contrast, states the December 2025 limit expressly. No federal successor for exterior doors was found on IRS or DOE sources as of 26 September 2026. State and utility programmes vary and are worth checking locally.
What this page does not cover
Impact and structural ratings — hurricane approvals, design pressure, high-velocity hurricane zones — are a separate subject with separate documentation, and are not covered here yet. Prices live in the entry door and patio door cost guides. What a warranty covers and what transfers is in the warranty guide. Checking a quote line by line is the quote audit. Back to doors.
Last verified: 26 September 2026, with the version-status and NFRC label items re-checked on 27 September 2026. Every criterion above is taken from the ENERGY STAR Version 7.0 final specification, linked at the top. Written by Chris Horton. How we research and what we will not publish: our methodology.