Pocket doors are great for multi-functional spaces - adapting your home for flexibility
Home improvement is big business and increasingly we are feeling empowered to take on ambitious projects to make our home life more luxurious or practical, even if we end up paying someone to do it properly for us! Perhaps it was the pandemic which made people take a long, hard look at the home and how they could improve it, but since then we are making big decisions and seeking innovative solutions for making our homes more effective and more efficient.
Pocket Door systems are a great example of this; a relatively inexpensive way to open up space and change the functionality of a home for the better. The headline benefit of the pocket door is its space-saving ability, the way it opens horizontally into a wall recess rather than encroaching into a room like a traditional hinged door. This opens up many opportunities, particularly for those blessed with creative thinking and who can see possibilities that maybe others can’t. The truth is, even with a pocket door installed in the home, you are still pushed for space, and often we have to create a dual purpose for a room so that it is fully utilised and we are making the best use of space all of the time.
Ideas for creating flexible uses for a room with a pocket door
It is bad practice to have a room dedicated to a single use, when this restricts its effectiveness and means it lays empty and unused 95% of the time. When we are pushed for space in the home and are crying out for practical solutions, leaving a room largely under-utilised is wasteful. So this could be a kids playroom that they have largely grown out of and rarely use. Or it could be a dedicated guest bedroom that only gets used a couple of times a year these days. Surely you can find a better use for that space? The pocket door allows you to do that by maintaining the current use but also making the room adaptable for different uses as and when needed. Let’s look at some examples:
More and more of us are working from home for some or all of the time, so suddenly we need a quiet and comfortable space to call our own. Maybe we need somewhere to work quietly on an evening, or to pursue a new hobby or interest we’ve found, but the only available space is the barely-used guest bedroom. With the pocket door you can keep the bed for guests and now you can also fit in a desk and chair, maybe even a set of drawers. If space is tight, maybe you can use a sofa bed for when guests come? But for the majority of the time, now you have a practical home office.
Things change, families grow or move away, and sometimes we find we are needing a guest bedroom more than previously and have nowhere comfortable other than the living room sofa. But the only space we have is the kids’ playroom. They only use it on a weekend, or the odd evening and most of the time its left empty. That’s a crying shame, but with the pocket door you can keep the playroom available and when needed, tidy everything up, unfurl a sofa bed and make it the guest bedroom you so badly need.
- Downstairs entertainment space
Pocket doors are great for creating an en-suite bathroom, a downstairs toilet or a utility room at the back of the kitchen, but in terms of flexible space, there are examples downstairs for when you are entertaining or have large family gatherings at Christmas. A family home with a separate dining room is often awkward when people are round, because there is no flow and people are isolated in different rooms. It can affect the atmosphere and, in truth, means the party never gets going. With double pocket doors you can open up space between a kitchen and dining room, or between a dining room and living room, by opening the doors when you are entertaining. This creates a more open plan layout where people can move around more freely, but at all other times you can close the space off to maintain separate rooms.
Contact the Pocket Door Shop for advice on how to use your pocket doors
So the pocket door can be the solution to the issue of making the most of your home, and fully utilising the space you have available. The pocket door can remove the need to make much more costly home improvements, such as a conservatory or loft extension, so speak to our sales experts at the Pocket Door Shop and we can advise on the best way to use pocket doors in the home to fully utilise the space you have available.
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