The modern market is very rich and extensive. Almost any product on it is presented in such an assortment that your eyes run wide and you can’t collect them in any way, and it’s not possible to choose at all. Especially in a situation if you are not well versed in what you need to buy. Here are the interior doors - are they so different? So much so that without a detailed study of the issue, it is impossible to approach the matter. What are good, for example, sliding interior doors?
What designs are there
Immediately, you need to make a reservation: we are talking here exclusively about interior doors. Outside and corridor are not taken into account. Doors differ in the material from which they are made (wooden and steel, glass and aluminum, etc.), in strength (deaf and glazed), in manufacturing (paneled and panel), in coating (veneered, laminated and others), in design finally.
The latter are of particular interest in this case. In this category, it is important to know that the doors are different in the way they open. There are only two types of them - hinged (which swing open forward or backward from a push) and sliding. What does it mean?Such doors seem to slide along a special guide along the wall. They simply slide off to the side, like the door of minibuses of the Gazelle type. These sliding interior doors are the subject of discussion.
Like swing doors, sliding doors have their advantages and disadvantages, their pros and cons. Nevertheless, it is they who are currently gaining more and more popularity, forcing their swing "colleagues" to "make room". Like it or not, but if earlier interior doors served to enclose space, now quite often they are installed not for this at all - but simply as an element of the interior, part of the decor. Therefore, they should also look presentable - obviously, in this sliding interior doors are ahead of their swing counterparts.
Benefits
The first and indisputable advantage of this type of door is that it is thanks to their help that it is so easy to divide the space into several different zones. Swing doors will not cope with this task, but partitions or accordions - as they say, "with a bang." Both are types of sliding doors, but this will be discussed in more detail below.
What can be separated from what? The possibilities for a flight of fancy are truly endless: in a combined bathroom, you can fence off the toilet bowl from the bathtub / shower cabin, so you get a separate toilet and bathroom. In the room where the child lives, it is permissible to equip the sleeping and play areas, and if the area allows - also a workingstudy room. These are just a couple of ideas - but there are actually many more.
Another advantage of interior sliding doors (pictured) is their invisibility, so to speak. Swing doors hide space, absorb it. With sliding doors, such embarrassment does not occur, on the contrary, they give the feeling of a large, enlarged territory. And this, in turn, guarantees safety. After all, if there is little free space, and there are a lot of people, sooner or later it can turn into injuries. Sliding interior doors allow free access to pass to other rooms. It is impossible to hit someone when opening or closing them.
The great advantage of this design is its lightness, simplicity and at the same time stability. By itself, a sliding door, unlike a swing door, will not open. However, one should not be naive to believe that it is heavy and unbearable - on the contrary, even a child can open it without making any special efforts for this. The door will not move along the guide back and forth, it will not warp. Such designs are considered more durable, their service life is an order of magnitude longer than that of swing doors.
Another advantage of sliding interior doors for someone may not seem so obvious and important, but for someone it will undoubtedly make a proper impression and act as a decisive factor. We are talking about the appearance of the doors - it is with sliding representatives that the design is thought out, as they say, according to the highest level. Whatever is used for their manufacture, as soon as they decorate,in an effort to draw the attention of potential buyers to the product. Swing doors, as a rule, are more simple and ascetic, so to speak.
Flaws
Some call the next moment negative, but one can hardly seriously talk about it as a minus of sliding interior doors. It's about their novelty. Conservatives - people who are accustomed to the old, familiar and understandable for a long time, argue that the swing door system has been worked out and studied over the years. As for the sliding design, although it is more modern, it requires detailed study, which is not very convenient for a certain category of customers. It is believed that the mechanism of sliding doors is more complex, it is more difficult to install them, there are more problems with them - and so on.
Some people talk about poor sound insulation, as well as the high price of goods, but these shortcomings are doubtful - everyone has their own idea of high cost, of noise. Therefore, these facts, of course, cannot be considered real, serious shortcomings. But what really is a disadvantage of such a design is that it is impossible to open the sliding door silently, because under the influence of the weight of the door, the rails will creak one way or another.
In addition, when planning to put such a door, it is necessary to allocate a certain space for it along the wall, where it will move. This is not always possible, especially in small apartments.
How to choose the right one
There are four criteria to consider when choosing sliding doors (photo shown). The first of them is the number of canvases in the door, in other words, the wings. They can be from one to four. By the way, here is another advantage over swing structures - they have a maximum of two doors. As a rule, one or two leaves are enough for a house, but when buying a similar door to an office, to a wide hall - in general, somewhere where there is a lot of space - all three or four leaves will be indispensable at once.
The second criterion is how the door opens. There are such options here: sliding doors can be either built-in or overhead. The first, as you can easily guess, are built into the wall, "enter" it. Accordingly, while still making repairs, it is necessary to build a niche into which the door will leave, and only then finish the entire wall.
The overhead doors move parallel to the wall, which means that you need to take care in advance that there is enough space for this, and nothing hangs on this wall. Of these two possibilities, the first one looks more aesthetically pleasing, the second one is cheaper in cost and easier to install. Savings and affordability or beauty - it's up to everyone to decide.
The third factor is how the door is attached. These are the so-called guides along which the mechanism moves. There are two options for their placement - either above and below, or only above. The most common now is only the top mount, since it is easy to stumble on the bottom, firstly, and secondly, it isa true dust vault.
Finally, the last thing you should pay attention to when choosing a sliding door is "parking". "Parking" is the section of wall that encloses the door when it is open. There are usually one or two such sections - while it is not at all necessary that their number will coincide with the number of door leaves. If it is one, then the canvases are shifted in one direction, if two - in different directions. Accordingly, single-leaf sliding mechanical doors in any case will have only one “parking” place, but the rest will have more options.
In addition to these four indicators, there are other factors that deserve special mention. First of all, it is soundproofing. Some materials, such as pine, have very good sound insulation, and if you purchase a door made of this wood, you will not have to spend money on an additional device to absorb noise.
The door finish is also important - if it is natural, the product will please its owner longer. Last but not least is the price in relation to quality. Of course, if there is not too much money, you will have to choose from economy class sliding interior doors, but in this case, you should remember that the quality of the products may be low.
You need to be wary if the cost of the door is very low - this indicates that during the production of the door they saved raw materials, which means that there are voids inside it. The coating of an inexpensive door will also not be natural, and its owner will be able to use such a design in less time than a more expensive one.
How it works
There are only two types of sliding door system. The first is called parallel-sliding. This means that it is shifted to the side parallel to the wall. The name of the second is a sliding-folding system. This is an accordion door, consisting of several sections. This design loses the first in sound insulation and strength. The design is more often used simply as part of the interior.
Types of sliding doors
How many different doors are on the market! List them - the fingers are not enough. Books, screens, harmonicas, coupe, cassette, radius - all of them are united by a similar mechanism. They move along rails installed, as already mentioned, either only from above, or from above and below. The differences are more than enough. Let's try to briefly go over at least some of the names.
Sliding doors are more reliable than folding doors (accordions). These include, for example:
- compartment - depending on the number of wings, they move either in one or two directions;
- cascading doors - have one non-moving leaf and several more movable leaves;
- internal doors - located inside the opening, the wings move towards each other;
- cassette doors - leaving to the side, they do not remain in sight, but seem to be hiding in a special niche;
- radius doors - have a rounded shape.
Folding structures include, for example, a screen, an accordion, a book, and the like. All of them can have either one or two doors.
How much do you need?
Really, what's the benefit of having more doors? In fact, both pros and cons have any design. Single leaf doors, for example, benefit from the fact that they are good for small spaces, as they are very compact. In addition, they can be attached to both the wall and the ceiling.
But double doors are larger, they have a fairly wide opening, they are perfect for large rooms. Therefore, the number of canvases should be chosen based on the space for which the door is required. By the way, they can also be made to order with as many wings as everyone wishes.
Automatic and manual
Sliding interior doors are of two types: manual - which means that they open and close manually, and automatic - for a person the technique works. A special sensor that reacts to the appearance of people activates the mechanism. As a result, the door is open or, on the contrary, locked. Automatic sliding doors are much more convenient, but also much more expensive.
It is precisely because of the high cost that such structures are most often found not in houses and apartments, but in offices or shops. They are aimed at such spaces, which is reflected even in their advantages. Automatic sliding doors allow a very large flow of people to pass through without creating a congestion, they make it possible to penetrate through them with a large and heavy load, and prevent a large amount of frosty air from entering the premises in winter. The service life of such a design is two to three years.
Aluminum
This option is usually made using two guides - top and bottom. Sliding aluminum doors are quite popular due to the fact that they can be glazed without the use of special jumpers vertically and horizontally, which gives the doors a more modern and aesthetic look. They can be both folding and retractable, and their service life is extremely high.
Plastic
Another name for plastic doors is portal doors. A similar name comes from the English word portal, which means - the gate. Such doors fit perfectly into a small room - they visually expand it. In addition, sliding plastic doors occupy a minimum area when open. At the same time, they are quite tight, and they can also be made not entirely of plastic, but partially using glass.
Glass
The indisputable advantage of sliding glass doors is the huge amount of light that they generously let into the premises. Of course, they can be placed in any room, but for bathrooms and dressing rooms - that is, spaces without windows - they will fit perfectly.
Doors may not necessarily be made of glass - or not only of it. An original solution is to mount a mirror sheet in glass doors, when one part of the door is a mirror, and the other is just glass. By the way, this combination of several materials is very popular. specialphoto printed glass sliding doors are favored by buyers.
Unfortunately, glass doors are not very common in apartments. They are much more likely to be placed in offices. This is largely due to the difficulty of their installation - it is desirable to design the installation of such doors at the stage of building construction.
What do glass sliding doors look like? This is a solid glass sheet with a wooden or aluminum frame. Such a door does not let in noise at all, therefore, in theory, it is a good option for a nursery. But only in theory - in practice, putting such doors in a children's room is dangerous.
Coupe is a popular choice
Sliding compartment doors do not require a special presentation - they are quite popular and known, probably, to everyone. As already mentioned, such doors belong to retractable. They can be any size, any color, any material. The main advantages of doors of this type, in addition to saving space, include the absence of thresholds that you can stumble on, as well as the versatility of the design - sliding doors will suit any room.
However, compartment doors also have disadvantages. This is, first of all, a complete lack of insulation - gaps remain between the door and the doorway, into which both noise and cold air penetrate. In addition, for many citizens, a clear disadvantage of such a design will be its price.
Accordion
These are representatives of folding doors. Previously, harmonicas were made mainly of plastic, but now the customerfree to choose almost any material. Sliding accordion doors are much cheaper than sliding structures, but, as already mentioned, their service life is also, unfortunately, short. Just like a coupe, accordions will not provide sound and heat insulation to their owners. In addition, these doors are only suitable for standard rectangular openings. Very original is the fact that accordion doors are sometimes mounted without door frames.
Partitions
Another type of folding doors is sliding partition doors. This is a great option for dividing a room into several separate zones. These doors are ideal for a small one-room apartment. Partitions have an aluminum frame, they themselves are, as a rule, glass. They can move at least in one direction, at least in the other direction, but they move completely without sound. Such designs withstand temperature drops well, serve for quite a long time and have a very pleasant and affordable price.
These are just a few models from the existing variety of types of interior sliding doors. And everyone can choose a door to their taste and wallet!
