Pocket doors for playrooms - flexible spaces for growing families

The ideal scenario for many people looking to get on the property ladder is that they buy a home knowing what their future will entail for the next ten or twenty years, perhaps even longer. It is common to have the ambition to buy a larger property than we need, with the plan to start a family, and hence the home develops over the years and has to be adapted to suit different needs. Most larger properties can be flexible like that, but space is the obvious barrier to a lot of plans. This is where the pocket door can come to your aid, and indeed, in any property of any size the pocket door is the key to creating a flexible home which changes to meet the needs of a growing family, and creating a playroom for the kids is a perfect example of that.

Pocket doors operate by opening into a wall cavity known as the ‘pocket’. This means they don’t open in arc that encroaches into your room or out into a corridor. The pocket door literally disappears from view and hence isn’t a barrier to movement, light or how you use space, compared to a traditional hinged door. This opens up a myriad of opportunities in terms how you use space and what flexible needs you can accommodate, and it is common for this flexibility to be ideal for managing the needs of a growing family.

How the pocket door is ideal for creating a kids’ playroom

It is a common scenario for a young couple to buy a three or even four-bedroom property, knowing that, if everything goes to plan, in a few years all those rooms will be occupied. In the meantime you can use them for different purposes, such as storage, pursuing a hobby, a home office or a guest bedroom, but when children are young it is great to provide them with their own dedicated playroom. This is ideal because:

• It gives children their own space
• Large, assembled toys can be left set-up
• Toys don’t need clearing away every five minutes and therefore the children have fewer restrictions to their play time
• The room can be used for something else once the children have grown up

The pocket door can be utilised to create a kids’ playroom because the space it creates could be vital. You may have the option of dividing a large bedroom into two smaller rooms, a bedroom and a playroom. The ten square feet created by the pocket door allows for this, as you can use every tiny bit of space right up to the door. Alternatively, you may need to make a playroom a multi-use room. Maybe you use it as a home office during the day, but when the kids come home from school and at weekends, it becomes their space. The pocket door allows you to fit in the furniture you need to make this a practical, dual-purpose space. Another popular multi-use situation is combining a guest bedroom and a kids’ playroom. We don’t have guests staying over all the time, in fact, quite rarely, but we want to retain the option of something we can offer people. The pocket door allows you to fit a bed and some bedroom furniture into a room, maybe even a sofabed, while still retaining the space for the kids to use as a playroom.

All these options ensure that all the available space in a home is fully utilised and there is no wasted space. This efficient use of a home thanks to the pocket door can actually save you a lot of money, if, for example, you were considering buying a larger home, or developing the home with an extension, loft conversion, cellar conversion or conservatory, in order to accommodate all these needs.  

Pocket door systems from Pocket Door Shop

Pocket doors are ideal for a kids’ playroom for other reasons also:

• The door is not a physical barrier, so you can open it and be able to see toddlers and young children playing while you are in another room.
• Maximising space can help you install bookshelves or storage units to create more floor space.
• Pocket doors can be fitted with soft-close/anti-slam mechanisms to ensure safety of young children.
• You are effectively future proofing your home, because this space can be adapted as the children grow up and have different needs, and eventually it may even return back to being your own personal space when the children have left home or have stopped using the room.

The kids’ playroom is a popular addition to family homes and needn’t be considered a luxury only available to large properties. Pocket door systems create flexible homes and spaces that can be quickly and easily adapted to suit the needs of a growing family and the different needs we all have. So consider what you need for your family home, and the pocket door is probably the answer.