Sliding or hinged wardrobe doors: which suits your room?
Sliding doors save floor space; hinged doors let you see the whole wardrobe at once. Here is how to choose, plus two in-between options: doors on some sections only, and one sliding front across several wardrobes.
Most people come to us with a firm idea of the door they want, and about half change their mind once we have looked at the room together. Neither type is better in general. Each one is better in a particular room.
Hinged doors
A hinged door swings out into the room. That is its one real cost: you need clear floor in front of the wardrobe roughly as wide as the door itself, usually 400 to 600 mm.
What you get for that space:
- You see everything at once. Open both doors and the whole wardrobe is in front of you.
- More choice of look. Shaker fronts, flat painted fronts, glass panels, handleless fronts with push-to-open.
- Narrower doors on wide wardrobes. We keep each leaf to a sensible width so it does not sag or swing into the bed.
- Usually a little cheaper for a small wardrobe, because the hardware is simpler.
Hinged doors suit a bedroom with space in front of the wardrobe, and anyone who wants a traditional or painted look. See the Beaufort classic double or the Ashdown painted shaker for examples.
Sliding doors
Sliding doors run on a track at the top and a guide at the bottom, so they never come into the room.
- No swing space. Good where a bed or a chest of drawers sits close to the wardrobe.
- Large, calm surfaces. A sliding leaf can be split into panels: woodgrain, mirror, satin glass, or a contrast colour.
- You only ever see part of the inside. With two leaves you see half; with three, about a third.
- Plan the inside around the doors. A drawer bank behind the point where two leaves overlap can be awkward to open, so we place drawers where a door can slide clear of them.
Sliding doors suit narrow rooms, long walls and anyone who likes the look of a single flat front. Have a look at the Windsor sliding wardrobe and the Richmond with mirror panels.
Doors on some sections only
You do not have to choose one door for the whole wardrobe. A wall can be divided into sections, and each section can have its own doors, or none:
- hinged doors over the hanging sections,
- a small pair of sliding doors over a shallow section,
- an open section left as a dressing table or display shelves.
This works well when one part of the wall is a dressing area and the rest is storage. The Clifton section doors design shows the idea.
One sliding front across several wardrobes
On a long wall we sometimes build two or more wardrobe bodies side by side and run one set of sliding doors across all of them, floor to ceiling. From the room it reads as one wall of doors, with no seams where the bodies meet.
It is usually the tidiest answer for a run longer than a single board can be cut, and it means buying one set of tracks instead of several. The Mayfair sliding wall is built this way.
A quick way to decide
- Measure the clear floor in front of the wardrobe. Under about 600 mm, sliding doors are usually the safer choice.
- Think about how you get dressed. If you like to see every shirt at once, hinged doors win.
- Decide on the look. Mirrors and big panels suit sliding doors; panelled and painted fronts suit hinged ones.
- Try both in the configurator. You can switch the door type on any design and the price updates as you go.
Frequently asked
- Are sliding doors more expensive than hinged doors?
- It depends on the size. On a small wardrobe hinged doors are often a little cheaper; on a long wall sliding doors can work out similar or cheaper because there are fewer leaves. The configurator shows the figure for your design.
- Can I have a mirror on a hinged door?
- Yes. A mirror can be fitted to a hinged door or to a panel of a sliding door.
- Do sliding doors need a ceiling fixing?
- Not if they run on the wardrobe itself. A floor-to-ceiling front across several wardrobes is fixed at the top, and we check the ceiling when we measure.
- Can different sections have different doors?
- Yes. Each section can have hinged doors, small sliding doors or no doors at all.
