Choosing the right pocket door for your home

The pocket door is enjoying a 21^st century renaissance after largely being dismissed for decades as an obsolete feature of Victorian homes. This is because people have discovered that the pocket door combines space-saving abilities with providing flexibility in the home and allowing you to open-up spaces and ‘zone-off’ spaces to suit the activities of the house. At the same time, pocket doors have a sleek, minimalist appeal which is great for contemporary homes, even if they are still considered as a classic ‘period’ feature, and as such, they are also suitable for older, more traditional homes.

With many different types of pocket door on the market, it can be hard to choose the right one for you. Visibly, many of these pocket doors may look similar, so we have put together a short guide to explain the different designs of pocket door available, and what benefits they could bring to your home. With this information you can make a choice on the best pocket door for you.

Single pocket doors

The single pocket door is the same size as a standard traditional hinged door, and hence is popularly used wherever a single door would normally be used. This includes bedrooms, bathrooms, en-suites, spare rooms, living rooms and dining rooms. For obvious reasons, this is the most popular style of pocket door, but it is important to remember that when installing a pocket door, you need to consider how much wall space is available. To accommodate the pocket door frame you will need just over twice the width of a standard single door, this is because the ‘pocket’ part of the frame accommodates the door when it is open, while the standard doorway part of the frame also accommodates the door when it is closed.

Double doors

Many homes will not have the available wall space to accommodate double pocket doors, but where they do, this is a great way to create flexibility in an open floor plan. Double pocket doors can divide a dining room from a kitchen, and can be opened up at meal times or when entertaining, and closed off to create separate rooms at other times. Similarly, double pocket doors can divide a living room and dining room, creating a large open plan layout as needed, but zoning these rooms off when family members want quiet time.

Fire doors

Fire doors are available as both single and double doors, but it is important to understand the legal reasons why they are needed before considering their physical size and practicality. Fire doors look exactly the same as standard doors, but are much heavier because they are made from denser, fire-retardant materials. This is so that they can restrict the spread of fire and smoke and give people time to escape from a house in the event of a fire. So an FD-30-rated fire door will restrict the spread of fire for approximately 30 minutes. Fire doors are legally required in a two-storey house where there is an integral garage leading into the home, and also in a three-storey house (such as a home renovated with a loft or basement conversion). In this case, fire doors are needed for all habitable rooms which lead off the main stairway, which in most cases will be all the rooms except toilets and bathrooms. These are not considered to be habitable rooms.

Syntesis/Flush doors

These types of pocket door are also available as both single and double doors, but the major significance of these doors are that they have no architrave trim around the edges, so they sit flush to the wall. This creates a very sleek and elegant impression and therefore looks great in contemporary homes, perhaps where there is lots of wall space and the unfussy appeal is very easy on the eye. Syntesis doors look great as double doors in downstairs living areas, for example.

Glass pocket doors

Again these are available as single and double doors, but in the home are most popular as single doors, and in smaller rooms where creating enough light might otherwise be a problem. If a small room is being used as a bedroom or a home office, you need sufficient light to make the room comfortable and less claustrophobic. Glass doors help to let light flood in and can be customised with a satin opaque finish which is good for creating privacy while still allowing light in. For this reason glass pocket doors are also popular for bathroom doors, and particularly en-suite bathrooms.

Telescopic pocket doors

A more unusual design is the telescopic pocket door, which is good for when you have a limited amount of wall space. With a telescopic pocket door the door itself is split into two halves, and when opening the door, one half disappears into the other half, before the two halves then disappear into the pocket wall cavity together. This means you only need half the width of the door as additional wall space, and in many smaller homes this may be the only way you can accommodate a pocket door.

Made to measure

At Pocket Door Shop we understand that not every home is the same and some homes have non-standard requirements, so we do offer a bespoke service where we can make a pocket door system to suit your specific needs. Of course the lead time on these is longer because they need to be specially made, and also the cost will reflect this, but our made to measure pocket door service has been a godsend to many people who have found a unique, value-for-money home solution from Pocket Door Shop.