Can pocket doors be used for utility rooms and laundry areas?

Although pocket doors now have a reputation for creating space and offering great flexibility in a home and also offer aesthetic benefits as a seamless and elegant interior design feature in a contemporary home, they can still be used for a purely functional benefit, namely closing-off areas and providing a suitable access point for a small space.

Pocket doors open along a horizontal plane by sliding along an overhead rail. This allows them to ‘open’ into a wall pocket rather than swinging into a room like a traditional hinged door. The major benefit this brings is that the space immediately in front of or behind a door becomes usable space. This allows rooms to become multi-purpose, or to have a new use completely, but it also allows small spaces in a home to be fully utilised. Adapting small, tight spaces in a home has become a major feature of the pocket door, and is often the only way that en-suite bathrooms, downstairs toilets or vital storage space can be created. The same applies to utility rooms and laundry areas.

The benefit of utility rooms and laundry areas

The key rooms in a home are usually those which we consider within an interior design scheme. So we look at colours, themes and styles which work together in a living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms. Often we look to link rooms together and create an interior scheme that flows throughout the house. Other rooms, however, are purely functional and don’t merit the same consideration. This might include storage, a boiler room, a downstairs cloakroom, a larder, a cellar or a utility room and laundry area.

A utility room and laundry area is a very necessary space, but is often a room we shut off from the rest of the house because it is a purely functional room where certain things happen, such as:

• Washing, drying and ironing
• A sleeping and eating place for pets
• Storage of tools, paints, cleaning materials and waste recycling
• Where muddy shoes and boots are kept when we come in  

So a utility room and laundry area isn’t for show, and is usually a restricted space reserved for family use and is rarely accessed by visitors. This makes it ideal for using a pocket door, because it is usually a small space that is shut off from the rest of the house. Hence, the pocket door acts as a partition wall in a kitchen and therefore allows the kitchen to be a fully designed space in keeping with the rest of the house, while the utility room and laundry area is retained as a purely functional room.

Advantages of using a pocket door for utility rooms and laundry areas

• Maximising space – It is common to partition-off a large kitchen to create a utility room or laundry area and the pocket door is the best way of doing this. It allows you to use a small space without a hinged door being an obstacle that blocks access.
• Space utilisation – Creating a room in this way ensures that space isn’t wasted in the home and you have 100% utilisation of all available space. A large kitchen may not be necessary, particularly if you have a separate dining area, and sectioning-off a room to use as a utility space is a practical solution, can improve the energy efficiency of the home and allows you to maintain a common interior scheme throughout the home. It is also much more cost-effective than building an extension.  
• Internal aesthetics – Creating this kind of utility room or storage area allows you to hide clutter and section-off appliances and noise with a partition wall that is effectively just the pocket door. This creates a neat and stylish door at the end of a kitchen and hence can maintain your interior scheme.
• Limited wall space – If you have limited wall space you can use a telescopic pocket door for a utility room. This is a door that is in two vertical sections, and one half opens into the other half, meaning you only need half the wall space in which to accommodate the open door.

Pocket doors are the best way to create a utility room and laundry area because they can maximise usable space where there are space limitations. This is ideal for a utility room where there are appliances and necessary storage functions which don’t need to be seen or visible, and where interior décor schemes don’t need to be maintained. Therefore, yes, pocket door systems available from MB Direct can be used for utility rooms and laundry areas and will bring a number of practical and aesthetic benefits.