Pocket doors and kitchen designs - streamlining your culinary space

There are two main benefits to installing a pocket door, in addition to their obvious aesthetic qualities. The first is to create much-needed space and the second is to create flexibility in introducing multi-use spaces into the home. Both of these benefits come into their own when considering installing a pocket door in your kitchen.

When considering the main rooms of the house, the kitchen is often the one we give most attention to. Apart from the obvious requirements to store, prepare and eat food, the kitchen is often the hub of most homes. It is where people congregate when they return home, and where families gather most often, whether informally for occasional chats or more formally at meal times. The kitchen is where the head of the household, ie. parents or homeowner, can most often be found. For this reason, the design of our kitchen is worthy of careful consideration and is a place where we think about space and practicalities more closely than anywhere else.

How the pocket door helps to improve your kitchen

Using a traditional hinged door in your kitchen means that it will open into your kitchen space. Alternatively, the pocket door opens by sliding along an overhead rail before disappearing into its ‘pocket’. Therefore it doesn’t encroach into a room and opens up vital space behind the door which was otherwise redundant. In a kitchen space this is perhaps more useful than anywhere else and opens up several opportunities and options.

So what improvements can you make to a kitchen by installing a pocket door?

Storage – A pantry is something of a Victorian design quirk, but food and equipment storage is always going to be useful and many people have a sectioned-off storage cupboard in the kitchen for miscellaneous items. Using a pocket door for a pantry door gives you much more storage space on the other side and keeps your kitchen tidy and uncluttered.

Worktop space – There is nothing worse than sweating over Sunday dinner and wrestling for worktop space when trying to serve up. It can become dangerous to precariously balance hot dishes and pans on the toaster or the sink top, and so just one extra work surface could make all the difference. Now that you have an extra eight to ten square feet behind the door, this might be the most practical solution in terms of how to use it.

Equipment – It is not uncommon for people to lack the luxury of being able to install a large freezer or a dishwasher in a kitchen, and if you haven’t got space for a utility room or any outdoor space, you have to get creative. A pocket door may just provide you with the space to install an item such as these and to therefore offer you considerable lifestyle benefits.

Table – Eating your tea on your knee in front of the TV is an occasional treat for some, but might be an everyday necessity for others, who live in a small home with no dining room or a small kitchen. That extra few feet of space may just allow you to install a small table and chairs in the kitchen and allow for a more formal and practical setting for eating on a day-to-day basis, even if it is too small to help with entertaining.

Utility room – If you are blessed with a large kitchen, it is often the case that space gets wasted and you don’t maximise its use or usefulness. A good way to utilise a large kitchen is to build a partition wall and create a utility room. This is where you can create good storage facilities, do your ironing, keep the freezer or washing machine or maybe the dog sleeps in there? However you choose to use it, the utility room is a useful way to section-off space using the pocket door.

Flexible space – Often a home is blessed with a separate dining room or living room, but as isolated rooms there is very little flow between them and hence there is something of a disconnect. By installing a double pocket door system between a kitchen and dining room you can create open floor plans. This is great for creating a more communal feel to a home, particularly when entertaining, but also during the week when families can enjoy an open, lighter and more flexible space. When necessary, the pocket door can be closed to provide more privacy. Ultimately, the kitchen and living room are intrinsically linked and the pocket door is a great way to make the most of that connection.

Contact the Pocket Door Shop for advice on how to maximise space in your kitchen

As one of the most important rooms in the home, kitchen design is something you need to get right, so contact our expert team at Pocket Door Shop and we can advise on how to utilise our pocket door systems to maximise space in the kitchen and make the space work better for you.