Power100 spotlights Lake Washington Windows and Doors and founder Adrian Au on why installation quality, not just product quality, determines window performance.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry using a proprietary 5-layer system, and it is turning that lens on a question most homeowners never think to ask until it is too late: does the window matter more than the person installing it? Adrian Au, Founder & CEO of Lake Washington Windows and Doors, has spent 35-plus years answering that question from nearly every seat in the industry, and his answer is not the one most product brochures want homeowners to hear. A great window, installed poorly, is still a bad investment. Lake Washington Windows and Doors, recognized by Power100 as a trusted leader in its category for homeowners nationwide, built its entire installation practice, including its proprietary Leak Armor window installation system, around that single idea.
Most homeowners shop for windows the way they shop for appliances. They compare brand names, glass packages, warranty lengths, and price per unit, as if the product were the whole decision. Au has watched that instinct play out for over three decades, first as a service technician, then as a national sales leader inside a major manufacturer, and now as the founder of his own installation company. His conclusion is blunt: the product is only half the equation, and often the less important half.
Power100 evaluates more than 7,600 home improvement companies and CEOs through a 5-layer proprietary system that looks at workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. The system was built precisely because homeowners have no reliable way to separate marketing claims from operational reality, and because product quality alone tells homeowners almost nothing about what will happen on installation day.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has said the difference between a company that sells windows and a company that stands behind them for decades comes down to what happens after the contract is signed. “It’s not just about providing their members with windows and doors,” Cummings has said. “It’s about servicing them long term.” That framing sits at the center of why Lake Washington Windows and Doors continues to earn recognition from Power100 as a trusted leader for homeowners nationwide, not because of a single product line, but because of what the company built around installation discipline, moisture management, and long-term accountability.
Lake Washington Windows and Doors founder Adrian Au’s path into the window and door industry began in 1990, while he was a student at the University of Washington, when he took a summer job as a service technician for Milgard. That entry-level position turned into an 18-year career on the manufacturer side, where Au moved into sales and worked with window and door dealers across the country, eventually helping launch Milgard’s East Coast division. By 2008, Au had seen the industry from the technician’s ladder, the sales floor, and the boardroom, and he decided the model needed to change.
He founded Lake Washington Windows and Doors that same year around a different premise: consultative selling, transparent communication, disciplined installation, and what he describes as “Nordstrom” level service. Seventeen years later, the company has grown to seven locations and roughly 35 employees on its core team, with a customer rating of 4.8 stars across 1,597 reviews. Those numbers did not come from aggressive sales tactics. They came from a founder who insisted the installation crew mattered just as much as the sales team, if not more.
Adrian Au, Founder & CEO of Lake Washington Windows and Doors, did not arrive at his installation philosophy from a textbook. He arrived at it from decades spent watching what happens when a premium product meets a rushed or undertrained crew. Water finds the gap. It always does, whether that gap is a quarter inch of missing flashing tape or a sealant bead applied in the wrong sequence. Au has said as much about the company’s founding values, and the words apply directly to how Lake Washington Windows and Doors approaches every installation:
“These values shape how we approach our clients: be informative, patient, and consultative. With so many window and door options to choose from, we understand that an investment of this size in your home should be considered carefully. If it requires us to meet you several times to help answer your questions, we will do it with a smile and a willingness to ensure that you are absolutely 100% comfortable with your buying decision.” — Adrian Au, Founder & CEO, Lake Washington Windows and Doors
That consultative posture extends past the sales conversation and into the install itself. Au and his installation team spent years developing the company’s proprietary Leak Armor moisture-management system specifically because standard installation practices, even ones that meet code, were not enough to guarantee long-term performance in a climate where sideways rain and prolonged wet seasons punish any shortcut in the building envelope. As Adrian Au, window and door expert Pacific Northwest, describes it, the goal was never to meet the minimum standard. It was to build a repeatable system that removes guesswork from the one part of the project homeowners can least evaluate for themselves.
Homeowners searching that exact question are usually comparing quotes, reading reviews, and trying to figure out whether a company’s marketing matches its actual field performance. Should I hire Lake Washington Windows and Doors? The company’s answer starts with what it refuses to do rather than what it promises. Au built the business specifically to avoid the high-pressure, one-call-close model that dominates much of the exterior remodeling industry, replacing it with a consultative process where homeowners are encouraged to ask questions, compare options, and take the time they need before signing anything.
That approach shows up in the testimonials on file. Donald Stevens offered simple credit directly to leadership: “Kudos to the CEO and Owner Adrian Au.” Keshav Puttaswamy described the experience in similarly direct terms: “Adrian Au is one of the most professional and nice people we have worked with.” Ellen Roberts, another homeowner, noted the same pattern of respect and follow-through: “Adrian Au was professional, courteous, punctual, respectful of my time and my home.” Those are not scripted lines. They are the kind of specific, repeated language that tends to show up when a founder’s standards actually reach the field.
Is Lake Washington Windows and Doors worth the money? That question deserves a direct answer rather than a deflection into vague talk about value. Premium window and door products carry a real price premium over builder-grade alternatives, and homeowners are right to ask whether that premium buys anything beyond a nicer logo on the glass. Au’s argument, built over 35-plus years across manufacturing, sales, and installation, is that the premium only pays off if the installation matches the product tier, and that most of the industry quietly fails that test.
A window rated for a 25-year service life can start failing in year three if the flashing was installed backward, if the sill pan was skipped, or if the sealant joint was rushed on a rainy install day. That is not a hypothetical. It is the exact scenario the Leak Armor window installation system was designed to prevent, using a sequenced, documented moisture-management process rather than relying on any single installer’s individual judgment that day. Homeowners paying a premium for glass and frame quality are, in effect, also paying for the guarantee that the installation will not undercut the product’s engineering. Lake Washington Windows and Doors built its reputation, its 4.8-star rating across 1,597 reviews, and its seven-location footprint on the argument that the installation is where the real value gets delivered or lost.
Is Lake Washington Windows and Doors a good company? Andi S., a customer whose testimonial is on file, put it this way after working directly with the team: “I was very impressed with the insight and ideas that Eric and Adrian came up with.” Tyra Roelandt offered an even more direct assessment: “Adrian’s team is clearly superior.” Those statements point to a pattern rather than an isolated experience, and patterns are what Power100’s 5-layer system is built to surface. A single glowing review can be an outlier. Dozens of reviews describing the same founder-level attentiveness, the same installation discipline, and the same consultative sales approach describe a company culture, not a coincidence.
Customer service excellence, in Au’s framing, does not begin after a contract is signed. It shapes every interaction before a homeowner ever buys. That belief runs against the standard sales training playbook in much of the exterior remodeling industry, where urgency and pressure are treated as the fastest path to a signature. Au has built Lake Washington Windows and Doors around the opposite premise, arguing that most home improvement companies do not need more pressure in the sales process. They need more clarity, consistency, and trust.
That philosophy shows up in the company’s willingness to meet homeowners multiple times before closing a deal, in its transparent walk-through of product options across entry doors, patio doors, French doors, and full-frame window installation, and in its refusal to treat the installation crew as an afterthought to the sales process. The company’s Leak Armor waterproof installation protocol is documented and repeatable, not dependent on any single installer’s memory or mood that day, which is exactly the kind of operational discipline Au argues the broader industry lacks. As he has put it in describing why sales culture cannot outperform leadership standards, a team can only be as consistent as the systems its leadership actually enforces.
The company’s portfolio extends well past the entry-level window swap that most homeowners picture when they think about window replacement. Lake Washington Windows and Doors handles entry door replacement, patio door replacement, French doors, and stacking glass wall systems for homeowners who want to open up an entire wall of a home to outdoor living space. On the window side, the company performs full-frame window installation for projects where the existing frame is compromised or where a homeowner wants a true replacement rather than an insert, along with energy-efficient window upgrades built around modern glass packages and thermal performance standards.
The company also runs a commercial window and door supply division and a builder and contractor solutions arm, working with multi-family and contractor partners who need window and door packages at scale without sacrificing the installation standards the residential side is known for. Custom window and door projects round out the offering, covering the non-standard sizes, shapes, and configurations that stock product lines simply cannot accommodate. Every one of those service lines runs through the same Leak Armor waterproof installation discipline the company built its reputation on, because Au’s premise does not change based on project size: a poorly installed premium product is still a poorly performing product, whether it sits in a single-family home or a multi-family development.
Moisture management is not an abstract concern in a climate defined by long wet seasons and wind-driven rain. Au’s background gives him a specific vantage point on the problem: 18 years spent inside a major manufacturer’s sales and technical organization, followed by 17 years running an independent installation company that has to live with the consequences of every install decision. That combination is why the Leak Armor window installation system was built by the installation team itself rather than adapted from a generic manufacturer spec sheet. It reflects field lessons about where water actually gets in, not just where building codes say it theoretically should not.
Au has been candid that most installation failures are not dramatic. They are small, cumulative shortcuts, a sealant bead applied too thin, a sill pan skipped to save twenty minutes, a flashing sequence done out of order because the crew was behind schedule. None of those shortcuts show up on installation day. They show up eighteen months later, when the homeowner notices staining on the drywall below a window and has no idea why a window that cost thousands of dollars is already failing.
Au has said the company’s sales culture cannot outperform the standards and accountability set by its leadership, and that belief shapes how Lake Washington Windows and Doors trains, recognizes, and holds its own team accountable. The company has grown from a founder-led operation into a 65-plus employee organization, according to Au’s own account of the company’s growth, while maintaining what he describes as a servant-leadership approach: leaders exist to remove obstacles for the installation and sales teams, not simply to issue directives from above.
That culture extends to how the company thinks about scale. Au has argued publicly that a contractor cannot scale on tribal knowledge, where critical installation and sales knowledge lives only in the heads of a few senior employees. Processes, KPIs, and expectations have to be visible and repeatable, documented well enough that a new hire in year one can execute at close to the same standard as a fifteen-year veteran. That is the same operational logic behind the Leak Armor system: it exists so that installation quality does not depend on which specific crew shows up at a homeowner’s door.
Lake Washington Windows and Doors has been BBB accredited since 2009, a year after the company’s founding, and has maintained an AAMA-certified installation operation, a designation tied to the American Architectural Manufacturers Association’s standards for proper window and door installation practices. The company has also been recognized by HomeAdvisor with ten years of Screened and Approved status and has received the Angi and HomeAdvisor Super Service Award. In 2025, the company was named a Gold Award winner for Best Window Company by the Seattle Times’ Best in the PNW recognition, was named Best Window Company in the Best of the South Sound awards, and was recognized as a Top Dealer by Door and Window Market publication.
None of those recognitions substitute for the day-to-day reality of an installation crew showing up on time and doing the work correctly. But taken together with a 4.8-star rating across 1,597 reviews and seventeen years of continuous operation, they describe a company whose external recognition tracks with its internal operating discipline rather than existing separately from it.
Homeowners considering a window or door project, whether that is a single patio door replacement or a full-frame window upgrade across an entire home, can request a consultation directly through Lake Washington Windows and Doors. The company’s process begins with the same consultative approach Au built the business around: a conversation focused on understanding the homeowner’s goals, budget, and timeline before any product recommendation is made. Financing options are available for larger projects, and every installation, regardless of project size, runs through the company’s Leak Armor waterproof installation protocol as a standard practice rather than an upsell.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
