A pocket door can be the unsung hero in a room design, freeing up valuable floor space by sliding discreetly on a track to provide privacy or connectivity between rooms as needed. Here are 10 ways to use a pocket door to improve a room.
Black and Milk | Interior Design | London
1. Keep a hallway clutter-free. A busy hallway with lots of connecting doors and opening cabinets is a prime location for a pocket door. By gliding neatly into the recess of a wall to allow access to a room beyond, as shown in this hallway, a pocket door is something you aren’t likely to trip over or bump into, allowing for better circulation around a house and more floor space in a hectic entryway.
With a shade of light gray and a simple, fuss-free design, this neat door subtly slides into the Scandinavian-style interior of this hallway. Take a page out of this door’s book, and choose a style and color that blend with your existing decor to ensure that it looks right at home.
STEPHEN FLETCHER ARCHITECTS
2. Create a flexible space. This open-plan living room and kitchen was created from the framework of two separate rooms. The inclusion of tall pocket doors between the two areas lets the space return to its original layout in an instant, with the doors filling in the area where a dividing wall would’ve been.
By taking the door frame right to the ceiling and as far out to the sides as possible (doubling up the pocket doors to allow for this), the rooms are almost completely open to each other when the doors are pulled back.
STEPHEN FLETCHER ARCHITECTS
This is the room viewed from the other side of the doors.
The Vawdrey House
3. Go for a color splash. Because of the “now you see it, now you don’t” element to pocket doors, using them can be a really fun way to play with color in an interior, changing the feel of a room from practical to playful in a flash.
The bold turquoise door in this open kitchen-dining room shows how a pocket door can add something special to the interior of a space. If you’re considering something similar, keep in mind that the color needs to work well when viewed from both sides, so it will need to complement the decor of the room beyond.
How to Create a Cohesive Color Flow Throughout Your Home
4. Make them virtually invisible. If you want to downplay a connecting door, then a set of plain pocket doors like these, designed to fit unobtrusively into a contemporary room design, is a neat solution.
Choosing flat-panel doors with recessed handles and taking them right up to the ceiling creates a uniform finish when the doors are pulled right across.
Blakes London
5. Match the window frames. These pocket doors blend in with the rest of the living room, thanks to the way they mirror the black-framed windows beyond and pick up the dark graphite tones of the custom shelving around the door frame.
You can just see a sliver of the glass doors in this photo, but when pulled across, they provide the effect of a window panel. Something like this is a good solution if you want to zone the space and keep in the warmth, but don’t want or need to totally screen the view of the room beyond.
Nash Baker Architects
6. Add grandeur with paneling. A grand doorway like this traditionally would’ve had paneled shutters or large doors to divide the two rooms, but a pair of paneled pocket doors provides the same level of period authenticity while offering modern practicality.
If you want to bring a traditional feel to your interior, consider a set of paneled pocket doors like these, but look to the period of your property for clues as to the style of paneling that would be most appropriate for your home.
How to Bring Out Your Home’s Character With Trim
MMM Architects Ltd
7. Include space for storage. Now this is a room design that shows how to squeeze every last drop of potential out of a compact floor plan. The double pocket doors tuck into the wall to allow full access to the living room from the hallway beyond without impinging on the floor space. The tuck-away doors also clear the way for built-in shelving up and over the door frame.
20 Book-Lovers’ Spaces That Will Make You Want to Read
Architect Your Home
8. Incorporate glass. A partial-glass sliding door is a good solution if you aren’t sure whether you want a doorway or an open-plan layout. This door can be pulled shut to retain heat or muffle noise when desired, but the glass panel still allows a visual connection and ensures that the dining space remains bright and airy.
This is a smart option for a room that connects with a hallway, since each space can borrow light from the other and since privacy in a hallway is rarely required.
Design Workshop: How to Borrow Light
amorybrown.co.uk
9. Use for a broken-plan layout. A pocket door is a good solution for enabling a better connection between two separate spaces. A bathroom and a dressing area, for example, may need to be divided with a door when the bathroom is in use but also may need to be connected at other times, such as when getting ready for work in the morning.
In this instance, the entire wall space outside the bathroom in the hallway is used for storage, with a dressing gown hook outside the bathroom that is still accessible from the bathroom, thanks to the fully retractable nature of the pocket door.
Open Plan Not Your Thing? Try ‘Broken Plan’
Black and Milk | Interior Design | London
10. Play with symmetry. This tiny apartment abounds with clever space-saving ideas, not the least of which are the two pocket doors shown reflected in the mirrored wall behind the sofa. Two regular doors in a room this compact would’ve eaten into valuable floor space, complicating the furniture arrangement.
Instead, two neatly symmetrical pocket doors provide a much smarter solution. The doors can slide efficiently into the wall to open up and connect the three spaces when required, and they also allow a better flow throughout the space.
Show us: Do you have a clever set of pocket doors in your house? Please share a photo in the Comments.
More
Design Workshop: Thinking Differently About Doors
