The Pocket Door Is the Vintage Design We Definitely Want Back

When interior design embraces retro fashions so often, we can begin to wonder whether everyone’s imaginations have run dry. The last few years have seen 1970s designs come back in abundance; some are welcome and some are not, but it sometimes seems like fashions are on a cycle and every one of them will come back into favour eventually. And we can be forgiven for thinking this doesn’t leave much room for new, innovative fashions, we just keep regurgitating the old ones.

At the moment we can see that corner sofas and chaise sofas are back in fashion, along with flock wallpaper and 1970s sideboards and wall decoration. These are items that made us perhaps cringe a few years ago, and we would laugh together whilst leafing through old photo albums. Maybe we still do? But the laughter stops when we look around and realise we have fallen hook, line and sinker for the retro fashion revolution ourselves.

Bringing back forgotten design classics

But of course, whilst some retro fashions are designed to shock, or to make an ironic statement, some come back simply because they are really useful and practical. The pocket door is a great example of this; stuck in a time warp of kitsch design oddities for several decades, before coming roaring back triumphantly to steal the crown as ‘the’ retro design classic you never realised you couldn’t live without.

The pocket door was a roaring success in the 1970s, but quickly disappeared, and not into a convenient, hidden ‘pocket’ in a wall recess, but into some kind of design time capsule “not to be opened until the new millennium”.

On a pretty basic level, the pocket door is a functional feature of a home that serves a really practical purpose. It is unassuming and doesn’t claim to save the world, but it has saved space for people for many years and enabled multi-functional rooms to be created too. Quite why it disappeared into this forgotten design vortex is something of a mystery, but the main thing is that it’s back with a vengeance now, and as well as serving a practical purpose for people looking to make the best use of every inch of space in their home, it looks fantastic too.

The brilliance of the humble pocket door

The designs supplied by the Pocket Door Shop are contemporary, sleek and stylish; perfect for the modern home and the modern office, and in all honesty, there is nothing ‘retro’ or ‘vintage’ about them.

Many people call the 1970s the ‘decade that taste forgot’ and there are plenty of design ideas that we don’t necessarily want back. Wood panelling, beanbag chairs, linoleum and shag pile carpets have really seen their day, and if they ever come back in fashion we might be wincing at our photo albums once again, but the humble pocket door doesn’t deserve to be categorised in such a way.

Our products show that the pocket door is an innovative design idea that is perfect for the minimalist, efficient and cost-effective 2020s. We are really glad that it is back in fashion, and maybe this time it will stick around forever?