Pocket doors and natural Light - brightening up your home

The primary feature of pocket doors is often promoted as being the space-creating quality, ie. by opening into a ‘pocket’ wall recess rather than into a room, the pocket door allows you to utilise the space directly behind a door, hence opening-up new possibilities for a room. However, an underrated quality of the pocket door is its ability to enhance natural light and enable it to shine throughout a home, therefore not only brightening up the home but improving the general health and wellbeing of your family also.

The practical problem with small rooms

It is a common problem that many people have faced in the home; making the best use of space and creating small rooms for new purposes. Often we will divide a large bedroom into two smaller rooms with a new dividing wall, perhaps if we are welcoming a new member of the family, or if two siblings are growing up and now need to have separate bedrooms. In recent years it has also become common for people to create a home working space if their work routines have started to change. Other needs can be a playroom for the kids or a guest bedroom for visitors.

In all these possible scenarios creating a new stud wall to divide a large room into two is a relatively simple process, and the pocket door is the ideal solution in order to maximise the available space. But when dividing a large room into two smaller rooms, it is likely that only one of them will have a window. This might be okay for a kids’ playroom, but for a bedroom and particularly for a home office, you really need some natural light, otherwise the room will feel stuffy, enclosed and claustrophobic. This could start to affect sleep patterns and behaviour, and if you are using the room as a home office, it could affect your productivity and health. Working in an enclosed space can make you irritable and tired and will start to affect your general wellbeing, which over time can affect your mental health, and perhaps without you realising it. So maximising any available natural light is crucial in making these smaller rooms usable and practical, and the pocket door enables you to do this.

The benefits of glass pocket doors

Glass pocket doors are the ideal solution for use in small rooms where you want to maximise the natural light. For a home office this will immediately make the room feel bigger and airier. You will get any natural light from the corridor or adjacent rooms and the flow of the house will immediately feel better because light is spreading through it. The same is true if you use a glass pocket door between two small bedrooms, the light will flow naturally making the rooms more comfortable and relaxing, and if you want to retain some privacy, glass pocket doors have the solution for this too.

It is possible to produce glass pocket doors with a satin opaque finish, which means the light shines through the glass pocket door, but you can’t see through it. So this retains some privacy while still getting the benefit of natural light. You can even customise the door design with a sandblasted design on the glass pocket door. And at the same time, of course you still get the space-saving benefits of the pocket door to ensure the bedrooms can fit beds and other furniture, or a home office can fit a desk and chair, and maybe also a set of drawers or a cabinet for a printer.

How else can pocket doors help maximise natural light?

Even if you don’t want a glass pocket door, the standard pocket door can still help to maximise natural light and enable it to spread and flow throughout your home. In the warmer months we are able to leave a door ajar rather than fully close it, perhaps if we are working at home when everyone is out. With a traditional hinged door, leaving it ajar means it encroaches into the room and hence creates an obstacle. We already know that this stops us using this space immediately behind the door, but this barrier also prevents natural light flowing through the room and into adjacent spaces. With a pocket door, if it is left ‘ajar’ this means only a portion of it slides into the pocket wall recess, this leaves a gap which can allow light to shine through and doesn’t create an obstacle. This improves the natural light both in the room itself and in the room or corridor adjacent to it.

Check out our range of glass pocket doors at MB Direct and order online today, while you can also browse our standard pocket door range and see how they can benefit the amount of natural light in your home too.