When to Install Pocket Doors (and All The Times We've Done It)

This certainly isn't our first time having pocket doors installed, and it won't be our last because they solve so many design problems! After pivoting from our initial plans to source some antique French doors to lead into the study, we realized we could add just as much charm with pocket doors. And it turns out the answer was right in front of us all along–in our pantry! We decided to have the pocket doors to the study designed and made after the pantry doors in the kitchen, and I couldn't be more in love.

Shop The Study

The 8-1/2 feet tall, solid walnut pantry doors we ordered through a company called Milgard which specializes in glass and doors. They were able to make this set of pocket doors for the study based on the same design with slightly different specs.

Shop The Kitchen

Here are the dimensions of the study doors for anyone interested!

Why Add Pocket Doors?

The decision to add built-ins in the study and narrow the cased opening went hand-in-hand. In order to have space for shelves on either side of the opening, meant we needed to narrow it all together. And, of course, we wanted to add doors since this is a space where Chris and I often work, but why pocket doors? Well, there are plenty of reasons to add pocket doors, but here are a few!

• Pocket doors don't break the flow of an open floor plan. Since our first-level floor plan flows from room to room with cased openings, we didn't want to disrupt that by adding swinging doors to the mix, especially right off of the front entry.
• Pocket doors maximize space. You can find yourself in a swinging door nightmare if you have a small room or narrow hallway, especially with multiple doors. It wouldn't have made sense to have doors swinging into the study with the built-ins right there, and we didn't really want them swinging out into the entry, potentially obstructing the beautiful grand staircase and front door. Pocket doors seemed to solve the problem!
• Aesthetics: Pocket doors can really simplify and tidy up how your home looks and feels. The pictures really speak for themselves on this one–minimal, modern, and fresh.

As a reminder, this is what the opening looked like before.

Before

After

Obsessed. Here's a link to the hardware we used!

As I said, this isn't our first (or last) time adding pocket doors. In fact, we've done it nine other times! Let's take a look.

1. Pocket doors in the laundry room

2. Pocket doors in the bonus room

3. Pocket doors in our primary closet

4 & 5 in our primary bathroom

I spy two!

6 & 7 in our Idaho bathroom

Not pictured is a pocket door that connected our bathroom to our bedroom.

8 & 9 twin pocket doors in our Idaho kitchen

Now I can't help but wonder where else we might need to add some pocket doors! ;)