I recently purchased a home and my search was quite extensive. To be exact, I looked at 74 options!
When I walked through the rooms of all these households, I came across something that I didn’t really like - my own reflection in the mirrored doors of the closets. Framing the mirrors in gilded frames only increased my distaste.
I’m not against mirrors, in many cases they are a great opportunity to visually expand the space and add variety to the interior, but mirrored cabinet doors are not for me. So I contacted several designers and asked for suggestions on cabinet door designs for the walk-in closet and more.
I present to the visitors of the Design Museum website the projects that these talented specialists offered me for various interior styles.
Leave your mark
A great way to add contrast to a neutral closet palette is to use dark wood on the cabinet doors, creating a sort of crosshair pattern across multiple cells. For those who like the “X” pattern, such door decor will help, among other things, to ventilate items of clothing in closets - a thin fabric matching the color is simply attached to the wooden frames on the inside.
The cabinets pictured here use silk fabric in a neutral shade, but you can use brighter colors to lift the mood and give a more positive vibe to your closet.
Radius systems
Sliding radius systems appeared on the door market relatively recently and immediately aroused increased interest. With the help of doors that slide along a certain radius, you can radically change the space and set the tone of the design and interior. Such doors look great in combination with suspended ceilings, which also have a rounded shape.
By means of radius sliding partition doors, a dressing room or work area is separated, and the required space is allocated for installing a bathroom. However, the installation of such doors in apartments of multi-storey buildings requires mandatory approval from all interested organizations.
The use of sliding doors in interior design has recently become increasingly popular, almost becoming widespread. In order to create your own unique interior, you need to carefully select the most suitable door.
Use oriental motifs
Instead of traditional wardrobe doors, try adding a little oriental beauty to the style of your space. Use Feng Shui practice to create a harmonious and balanced environment.
By using soft-colored screen doors, you will not only bring a touch of Asia to your bedroom decor, but you will also be able to diversify the color scheme of the room.
Glossy facade is still popular
- The 2022 wardrobe with bright and shiny glossy facades has not gone out of fashion this year either. However, they are now subject to slightly different requirements. More recently, designers advised diluting a monochromatic glossy fabric with an even brighter edging, but now it is not recommended to do this.
- The trend today is restraint and conciseness, and therefore there is no need to add any significant decor to the snow-white shiny facade of the wardrobe, and it should not be brighter than silver. However, it is acceptable to place a small drawing.
- Bright flowers or prints of overseas landscapes are no longer in fashion, but some natural texture, such as marble, looks truly modern and stylish.
Advice! If you still want to make a drawing on the cabinet, it should not be bright, but blurry, reminiscent of a shadow or fog rather than a picture.
Stylish wardrobe with a natural wood facade
Beautiful cabinet design in minimalist style
Fashionable interior with wardrobe
Stay within your budget
If you have to arrange a really large dressing room with several closets, then it is important not to go beyond the amount that you initially planned. As an option, you can use ready-made solutions for dressing room furniture from Ikea.
This is a visually attractive and practical option for decorating the fronts of your cabinets, which will not ruin the family budget.
Glass insert shapes
Popular types of forms.
Horizontal
They allow you to visually increase the width of a narrow doorway and make the room more spacious.
Vertical
They fit harmoniously into any interior style and create a pleasant accent in the space. In addition, horizontal inserts visually lengthen the height of interior doors.
Oval and round
Graceful rounded elements allow you to create a romantic and dreamy atmosphere, impart airiness to the atmosphere and create a cozy and very elegant design.
The photo shows an interior wooden door with a small round glass in the interior of the bathroom.
Rectangular and square
Due to the rigor and correctness of the lines, proportionality and traditional arrangement, square or rectangular inserts represent a classic and fairly conservative design solution.
Curly
They provide the opportunity to turn the door leaf into a unique and non-standard interior element that will become the dominant feature of the entire room.
Make sure it matches the style
To decorate the facades of wardrobes, use the same models as when decorating interior doorways. Thus, you can not only achieve a stylistic match of all elements of the bedroom interior, but also create a more harmonious atmosphere.
The photo shows a non-trivial version of doors that are used as interior doors in all rooms of the house and as facades of built-in wardrobes. These are four-panel doors made of white painted MDF and bronze fittings. Such doors will look harmonious both in a traditional interior and in a modern room design.
Material for sliding doors
Popular types of materials used for manufacturing:
- Glass. Matte, transparent, colored, patterned or plain glass products, thanks to such a diverse design, become a bright accent in any room.
- Wooden. Natural solid wood doors have a fairly high price. Sliding doors can either be made entirely of this material or have decorative wooden inserts.
- Fibreboard/MDF/chipboard. A more affordable and high-tech option than the previous one. Such door designs have a wide variety of configurations, which makes them truly unique.
- Plastic. They are a fairly common and relatively inexpensive type, distinguished by a huge color palette, special lightness and airiness.
- Aluminum. Reliable, safe, durable and resistant to mechanical stress. In most cases, these sliding doors have narrow aluminum frames and glazing.
- Combined. Quite popular products that allow you to combine and combine a variety of materials.
The photo shows a sleeping area with corner compartment doors made of chipboard.
When choosing a material, you should take into account not only how the door model will look externally, but also remember its functional qualities.
Accentuate your cabinets
You can make your closet an accent element of your interior. Use the well-known method of artificially aging wooden furniture - walnut wood looks antique if it is partially treated with light plaster.
In the bedroom image shown in the photo, the closet doors do not reach the floor, touching the snow-white panel, placed specifically to give the closet a more built-in look. Such a cabinet looks great against the background of walls decorated with decorative plaster, especially if the bedroom is designed in one of the country, Provence or shabby chic styles.
Examples of interior doors in various styles
Sliding doors, thanks to a variety of design options, organically fit into any style solution.
Classic
Noble, respectable and aristocratic classics most often involve wooden compartment structures with strict lines, proportional patterns and a simple, emphasized design. Such natural products always look prestigious, expensive and very elegant.
Loft
Models made from natural materials, such as wood, metal, glass or PVC and MDF canvas in white, black, brown or gray tones, will bring this slightly brutal style, freedom and comfort.
Modern
Organic door leaves, harmoniously combined with wall decoration and furniture, will undoubtedly attract attention, fit into the overall style and allow you to achieve a beautiful design result.
Scandinavian
The Scandi interior, which combines simplicity and naturalness, is decorated with lighter structures, painted in grey, light brown or snow-white shades, which will not stand out against the general background, but rather will favorably emphasize the restraint of the style.
The photo shows a Scandinavian-style dining room with white glazed sliding doors.
Provence
Natural carvings in light colors, antique canvases or elegant sliding doors decorated with patina or floral openwork patterns will blend especially harmoniously into the atmosphere of French Provence.
High tech
Doors with shiny and glossy surfaces, designs with plastic or aluminum frames, are ideally combined with high-tech design and innovative decorative elements in high-tech style.
Use the garage door principle
If you have a narrow closet or little space in the bedroom to accommodate swing doors (they require at least a meter of free space to open them), try large “garage” doors on slides.
A large door like in a garage or shed can open only a closet or the entire room, depending on the position. In a snow-white design, such a door will not look heavy and can bring a touch of rural life to the decor of your room.
History of sliding doors
Perhaps the most common association with sliding doors is the Japanese “shoji” mobile walls.
In the land of the rising sun, the first furushima shoji appeared around 200 BC. They were made from a wooden frame and paper stretched in it, since wood was a scarce material. They were used to divide the huge premises of the house into rooms and corridors.
In addition to the land of cherry blossoms and samurai, sliding doors have long been popular in Europe: Rome and Greece introduced doors operating on tracks back in the first century AD. They were often used if they wanted to hide a room or passage from view.
Residents of European territories preferred to use wood for sliding doors. But in Asian countries, analogues of shoji were created from stone and ran on stone rails or rails made of hardwood.
Mobile Japanese doors can fence off the required area of the room, turning it into a corridor or a small lounge area
Barn door on one track, repeating the wall decoration
A door that spans the staircase space and a door that does not cover the entire height of the opening - at the same time harmonious in these interiors
The room is divided into living and sleeping areas using cascading doors with glass inserts
Add ventilation to cabinets
If you use a wood louvre design at the top of cabinet doors, you allow air to circulate in the space around the cabinets. This is very convenient and practical, especially for the southern regions of the country.
The photo shows a design project for a bedroom in a Mexican house. The doors were made from local wood sourced from the forests of Cancun. In the design of this built-in wardrobe, the designers decided to use a mirror insert in the arched part to create the illusion of refraction of the space of the room.
Sliding wardrobe 2022 – smooth façade is trending
If we talk about the popularity of certain models, then today the trend is a completely smooth matte facade. However, if this option seems too boring and restrained to you, you can add beautiful decor to it. These can be parallel lines in the horizontal direction, they will divide your wardrobe in the very middle, you can divide the doors into identical rectangles or create a small geometric pattern.
Advice! The sliding wardrobe 2022 with a simple and smooth facade can be placed in any room, not only in the hallway or bedroom, but also in the living room, office, and dining room.
Interesting cabinet model with laminate fronts
Sophisticated and elegant white cabinet with wood accents
A special trend is the inconspicuous (hidden) wardrobe 2022. This is considered the most fashionable option today. The structure of the model, invisible to the naked eye, is created by the facade, which imitates the covering of a wall.
The cabinet can be finished with mirror, wood or plastic panels, even covered with wallpaper, but a minimal number of seams will make these surfaces look like a wall in any case. The design depends only on the style in which the entire room is made.
On a note! Using the sliding design of the doors, you can store your personal belongings even in the front living room, saving space. At the same time, the interior design will not suffer at all. Only your family members and closest friends will know about the presence of a wardrobe in your home.
Built-in hidden furniture set
Black, gray and orange will be in fashion in 2022
Use contrasting combinations
An option to dilute standard sliding doors on an aluminum frame is to use contrasting inserts. If the main door leaf is white, then you can insert stripes in the color of walnut and the now popular wenge.
The play of contrasts will not only add style to your doors, but will also transform the entire room. Any catchy, bright decorative elements can change the character of the interior without any special financial costs. In addition, sliding doors are an excellent option for rooms where it is not possible to install swing doors.
Wooden facades are fashionable
Today, the world is swept by a wave of naturalness and the fight for an eco-friendly lifestyle, which is completely justified, and this is reflected in the fashion for interior design. For this reason, facades with large wooden doors are at the peak of fashion and popularity.
They can be made not only from veneer, but also from simple high-quality plywood or, if material capabilities allow, natural solid wood.
You should take a responsible approach to planning the closet in the hallway
Combined model of a sliding wardrobe with opening and sliding doors
Completely smooth facades covered with veneer, almost without any pattern, are not very relevant. They gradually gave way to the defiantly expressed texture of a living tree.
- A large number of knots on your closet door is the most fashionable thing today. Such a piece of furniture can be placed in any room, but if you are able to support the presence of the cabinet with similar decor and other furnishings, you can safely assume that you have managed to keep up with the changing fashion in the field of interior design.
Practical people will prefer this type of cabinet design.
Wenge color has always been distinguished by its nobility
Advice! When choosing types of wood as the material used for the door facade, pay close attention to the light milky shade.
A beautiful wardrobe that contrasts perfectly with the overall interior
This color helps to create not only elegance in the room, but also comfort. It will refresh and visually enlarge your home, and the wood texture of this color fits perfectly with many interior styles.
Designer tips
- If you decide to order a wardrobe for a small kitchen and “hide” all the utensils from prying eyes, turning the room into a dining room, you can choose a “cappuccino” shade with a slight tint of barely noticeable yellow. For country and Provence styles, which continue to be popular, wooden facades can be artificially “aged”
- If you are installing a wardrobe in a loft-style apartment, choose cool shades of wooden facades. However, smooth veneered fronts in wardrobes are still installed in children's rooms; a large amount of cheerful decor saves the situation. Here they are usually guided not by fashion, but by the baby’s personal preferences and convenience.
Avoid "conflicts"
It happens that the possibility of installing hinged cabinet fronts is limited by the movement of interior doors. If a “conflict” between the doors is possible, then it is better to avoid it by any means, so that later you do not suffer during the operation of the cabinets.
In the project presented in the photo, the designers had to deal with an architecturally complex building - a new structure erected on an existing foundation. As a result, the ceilings of the rooms were low, the doors leading from the room to the stairs were located exactly where the closet should open. Therefore, it was decided to install built-in wardrobe doors sliding on skids.
Types of glass doors
There are several main types.
Sliding doors
This thoughtful design takes up a minimum of usable space, making it especially suitable for decorating small spaces.
Swing
They are the classic and most popular option, which is perfect for any interior design. Hinged models can have either one or two doors and differ in straight or arched shape.
The photo shows a balcony with interior hinged doors decorated with glass.
Recoil
They are canvases that roll away in opposite directions from each other. This design fits perfectly into any size room, but requires additional space on the wall around the doorway.
The photo shows white interior sliding doors with frosted glass in the living room.
Double (double-leaf)
Unlike previous products, double-leaf models take up much more space, so they are most relevant in spacious rooms.
Book door
It has a very stylish and original look and at the same time a fairly high price category.
Pendulum
Due to a special mechanism, the pendulum interior structure opens freely in any direction. In addition, such products do not require a door frame and are extremely simple to install.
Pencil door
Sliding interior pencil case models are an ideal option that saves space and has a truly aesthetic appearance that harmoniously combines with any style and architectural solution.
What to remember
Sliding wardrobes with glass or mirror facades look stylish and beautiful. They can be selected to suit any room design, purchased ready-made or ordered according to your wishes. But you have to pay for beauty with money and careful care.
Before visiting the store, carefully consider:
- The purpose of the cabinet and who you are buying it for.
- General concept and design.
- Sizes and type of wardrobe.
- What price are you willing to pay.
If you still encounter any difficulties, write questions in the comments, experts will advise.
Design and drawings of doors with glass inserts
With the help of various designs and patterns on glass, you can turn the door into a real art object.
Patterned
They are distinguished by their unique aesthetics and represent the basis for the formation of a unique, designer interior.
The photo shows light-colored interior products with matte patterned glazing in the hallway.
Stained glass
Picturesque interior paintings with artistic glass are a very bright decorative element that can significantly refresh and enrich a calm and discreet environment.
The photo shows the hall and interior sliding doors with stained glass made using the fusing technique.
Glass lattice
It has ideal geometric shapes, soft smooth lines and a noble appearance, due to which it is possible to harmonize the surrounding space.
With photo printing on the surface
With the help of such modern decor as photo printing, you can radically change the usual environment and make the door structure unique, bright and interesting.
With decorative stickers
Thanks to decorative stickers, you can easily refresh and stylishly decorate a glass surface, without depriving it of its airiness, transparency and weightlessness.
With transom
A transom is an additional leaf above the door structure, decorated with insert glass, which in turn can be frosted, transparent, stained glass or decorated with a chamfer, painting, mosaic or engraving.
How to clean different types of glass
It is enough to wipe ordinary glass with a dry cloth and glass detergent. Once a week will be enough.
Covered with Lacobel film, it is resistant to moisture, dirt, and scratches. Any cleaning agents, including alcohol-containing products, are suitable for the care and cleaning of lacobel. It is not recommended to treat the side with the applied varnish with abrasive materials.
ORACAL film requires more delicate handling. Conventional detergents are not suitable for cleaning it. The surface of such a film is very thin, scratches appear on it even from rough fabric. Therefore, wipe it only with a dry soft cloth without detergents.
To care for the sandblasted surface, you will need a soft damp cloth, lint-free wipes, foam sponges, and soft brushes. You can use soap solution, dishwashing liquid and glass washing liquid.
After cleaning, do not forget to remove any remaining drugs from the surface and wipe it dry. Do not use solvents, washing powders or any abrasive chemicals. Do not allow grease to come into contact with the matte surface.
