Designing with Interior Doors: Finding the Perfect Fit for Every Space
As you embark on the journey of designing your home’s interior, you’ll discover a rich array of interior door options. These choices allow you to achieve the precise aesthetic for any room or area while ensuring its essential function. Put simply, an interior door is any door that doesn’t serve as an exit to the outside of your home, encompassing doors for closets, bedrooms, bathrooms, basements, or offices.
Before you start selecting specific interior door types for your residence, it’s advisable to go through each room, listing the number of interior doors required and their primary purpose. Here’s a comprehensive overview of the interior door types at your disposal:
Key Types of Interior Doors
Passage Doors
Passage doors operate by swinging open and closed on two or more leaf hinges, making them the most prevalent door type in residential settings. They can be acquired either as a slab (which is simply the door panel itself) or as a pre-hung unit. A pre-hung door arrives pre-assembled within its own door frame, complete with hinges already attached, and the door itself typically pre-drilled for a lockset. While pre-hung doors expedite installation by removing the need for a carpenter to construct jambs, mortise hinge gains, and fit the door to the frame, their selection might be more limited.
Louver Doors
Louver doors are essentially variations of standard passage doors where all or a portion of the panels are replaced by angled wooden slats. Louver doors are commonly utilized for closets, utility rooms, and laundry areas because they effectively provide both ventilation and privacy. A full-louver panel format offers maximum airflow, whereas a louver-over-panel configuration provides a more refined style, closely resembling solid panel doors.
Sliding Doors (Bypass Doors)
Sliding doors, often referred to as bypass doors, are typically employed for wide openings such as those found in closets or master bathrooms. They operate by gliding horizontally from left to right. Since they don’t swing outwards, you needn’t concern yourself with furniture placement; however, it’s worth noting that only half of the opening is accessible at any given time.
Bifold Doors
Bifold doors are generally used to enclose spaces like closets, pantries, or laundry areas. These doors can be made from wood, metal, or composite materials like vinyl-covered wood, and usually come in a four-panel configuration. Bifold doors pivot on pins inserted into their top and bottom edges, allowing for a wider opening space than a sliding door. A similar alternative includes folding or accordion-folding doors, which occupy minimal space when fully opened.
French Doors
French doors can serve as a dramatic focal point within your home. They are suspended on hinges located at each side of a wide door opening and swing towards each other, meeting precisely in the center. When both sides of the door are open, an unobstructed view is created. French doors are available in a diverse array of styles and glass glazes, enabling them to perfectly complement your home’s décor.
Pocket Doors
Pocket doors boast a history spanning hundreds of years and are currently experiencing a resurgence due to their intriguing architectural qualities, particularly their ability to conserve floor space. Fundamentally, a pocket door is a door that is not mounted on hinges to swing open, but instead slides into and out of a concealed space within the wall. Pocket doors are available as singles, which slide open and shut from either the left or the right, or as double pocket doors, which slide together to meet in the middle from both the right and left sides. As architects continue to seek innovative methods to maximize floor space, they have increasingly integrated pocket doors into their designs.
Understanding Door Construction Methods
Once you’ve decided on the type of doors you wish to use, your next step involves determining their construction: hollow-core, solid-core, or solid wood.
Hollow-Core Doors
Hollow-core doors are constructed from thin veneer plywood or hardboard faces with a cardboard core, which helps to maintain the door’s rigidity. These doors are lightweight, cost-effective, easily punctured, and largely ineffective as sound barriers. However, the benefits of hardboard include its resistance to shrinking and swelling, its wood-like appearance, ease of painting, and remarkable affordability.
Solid-Core Doors
Solid-core interior doors closely mimic the appearance and feel of solid wood doors, but they feature a wood fiber core. They offer superior soundproofing capabilities compared to hollow-core doors and are significantly more durable. Most solid-core doors are designed with the same aesthetic appeal and robust properties as a solid wood door, but without the premium price tag.
Solid Wood Doors
Solid wood panel doors can be stained or painted to achieve a rich finish and inherently provide a natural sound barrier. Most manufacturers offer an extensive selection of custom wood doors in a wide range of wood species, allowing them to complement nearly all architectural styles.
It’s entirely feasible to mix and match the types of doors you employ throughout your home to both complement your home’s existing décor and to manage costs effectively. Be sure to clearly specify the desired door type for every room and space in your new home with your contractor.
Design Tip
An excellent strategy to make passageways brighter and more inviting is to incorporate interior doors with glass panels. Doors featuring glass panels facilitate a seamless visual connection between rooms that lack an open-plan layout and allow for the transmission of natural light. Utilizing doors with wood and glass panels specifically enables you to unleash your creativity with different wood species, glass types, and hardware, thereby enhancing your home’s architectural style and making certain rooms truly stand out.