Sliding doors sliding into the wall: features and installation. Sliding interior doors: prices, device, installation methods, advantages and disadvantages
Small rooms?
Great interior design ideas?
Elderly parents or tiny children?
Unusually wide openings?
In all these cases, sliding interior doors are the best solution. They are easy to open, they take up little (or sometimes not) space and allow you to create in any style.
Sliding doors differ from conventional swing doors in the way they open and fasten.
Differences between swing and sliding structures
You can buy sliding doors with a closer. Its task is to absorb shock when closing and ensure a smooth movement to the end point of opening / closing.
Sliding door design
The opening method regulates the design features:
Door leaf (single or double leaf)
Aluminum rails (the rail can be with or without mounting bracket)
Roller carriages
Lower leash (to prevent the pendulum effect)
Stoppers (retainers or travel stops)
Hardware (lock and handles)
What you need to know additionally:
As a rule, mechanisms for sliding doors are supplied complete with a leaf, a box and a casing.
When choosing mechanisms, the weight of the canvas should be taken into account.
The length of the guide should be twice the width of the opening.
Rollers are covered with wear-resistant rubber. The better the rubber, the higher the cost of the carriage.
Silent, soft sliding of partitions weighing up to 100 kg is provided by bearings. The tighter the bearings, the lower the chance of dust ingress and the longer their service life.
Sliding door installation
Installing a sliding door, although not easy, is possible on your own. Just follow the exact instructions that come with the product.
Installation algorithm:
Attach to the wall above the doorway with metal anchors a wooden beam with a length equal to the length of the rail.
Screw the guide rail to it at such a distance that the door moves freely along the wall.
Insert the roller mechanism into the guide and close it on both sides with plugs.
Install the staples on the upper end of the canvas and connect them to the rollers.
Violation of the instructions can lead to a quick breakdown of the door mechanism. Noise during movement, rattling, jamming and jerky movement indicate incorrect installation.
What are sliding doors?
The sliding door system can be adapted to any customer needs.
Coupe - a canvas or canvases move along the wall along the guides. This is the easiest way to install a sliding door.
Partition - like a compartment door, the canvases move along the wall, but differ in size. The height of the door-partition from floor to ceiling. The number of valves varies from two to four. Installation is suitable, for example, between a kitchen and a living room, a bedroom and an office.
Pencil case door - when opened, the door hides inside the wall. It can be single or double. The price for such sliding doors is the highest, since you have to pay not only for the cassette with the mechanism, but also for creating a false plasterboard wall.
The obvious advantage is that the canvas goes into a niche, does not violate the integrity of the interior and allows you to attach furniture items close to the wall.
Disadvantages of sliding doors
No matter how well the sliding door is installed, the design features do not allow it to be completely airtight. There is simply nowhere to install a seal for interior doors, and small gaps remain around the entire perimeter of the canvas.
Therefore, the partition prevents the spread of:
draft
In addition, the locks installed on the door are not as reliable as we would like. However, the high decorative component and ease of use more than pays for these little things.
More recently, sliding interior doors have been very popular among the population. They were installed in the classical open way or hidden behind a false wall. This method of installing doors freed up the free space that would have been occupied by ordinary open doors. The false wall provided soundproofing, which was simply necessary, since the sliding doors moved on special rollers along the installed rails, which created too much noise. The installation of such doors was an original solution to save space. They began to be massively installed in residential buildings. It has become a fashionable trend in modern interiors. But gradually the excitement for this innovation subsided, and classic interior doors again came to the fore in popularity, which are many times superior to sliding doors in terms of functionality, reliability and sound insulation.
Noise level through interior doors. The Choice of Silence
Practice has shown that sliding doors have very poor sound insulation, even the version of the door that is hidden behind a false wall. What can we say about those options where a false wall is not provided at all. Approximately 80% of consumers who have installed such doors at home complain about poor sound insulation, and after getting rid of them and replacing them with ordinary classic doors, they are satisfied. It is clear that doors hidden behind a false wall will have better sound insulation, but only when compared with sliding doors that simply hang on rollers along the wall.
Based on this, we can draw the first conclusions that speak against sliding doors: in terms of sound insulation quality, they are no good, even if they are hidden behind a false wall. An ordinary classic interior door, correctly installed, having a tight rebate on three of the four sides, is the best option in choosing a “quiet door”.
Rational use of usable area
Of course, if the doorway is in the middle of the wall, then the sliding door will be very useful in terms of ease of opening. It will not catch furniture standing along the wall, will not block the passage and create other inconveniences. In this case, it is very convenient.
But today there are many opening stops that protect the furniture and the door itself, so it can safely open onto the cabinet without the risk of damaging it or its surface.
In addition, in modern renovations, doorways are almost never located in the middle of the wall, and in most cases in the corner, shifted either to one wall or to another, which makes it possible to more rationally use the usable area of the room. A wardrobe is always placed along the wall where the doorway is located, which makes the room more square, and, therefore, wider and more spacious. This form of the room visually expands the free space, since the longer the room, the less light it receives from the window. The square shape of the room will always be lighter and cozier than a long and narrow room that looks like a corridor. Therefore, with the help of a closet, a long room can be slightly shortened, bringing its shape closer to a square.
Now pay attention to the area located near the doorway. It makes no sense to put anything there, since this is a passageway, so neither a bedside table, nor an armchair, nor even a mirror will be out of place there. The open door will be quietly along the wall, without disturbing anyone. Therefore, if the doorway is in a corner, there is no need to use sliding doors. You won't gain anything by installing sliding interior doors. In addition, by installing sliding doors and hiding them behind a false wall, you will lose 10 valuable centimeters of the useful length of the room, since the canvas itself and the niche for it will take 5 cm, and another 5 cm - the false wall itself, behind which this canvas will hide. That is, from the point of view of the rational use of usable space, the most reasonable solution would be to move the doorway as close as possible to the load-bearing wall and put an ordinary classic interior door there.
The leaf of an ordinary interior door and sliding doors has the same height - 2 m. But the classic door is installed directly into the box, and the sliding door additionally has slats with rollers, as well as fittings that are located above the canvas, which makes it at least 5 cm higher.
Now imagine that in the same corridor there are doors of different heights. Agree that it will not look aesthetically pleasing at all. It is clear that you will not be able to make all the doors in the apartment sliding with all your desire. For example, in the bathroom or toilet due to their low sound insulation. But the doors are part of the interior of the apartment, and should decorate it. Therefore, if there are several of them in one corridor, and they are hardly worth it, then it looks beautiful and harmonious. All this harmony will disappear if one of these doors is higher than all the others.
Comparing the cost of sliding doors and classic ones, it is safe to say that sliding doors are much more expensive.
After all, high-quality rails with good rollers cost about the same as a good canvas. And if you take an Italian guide with smooth closers, then the overpayment will be even more significant.
The sliding door, due to its design, greatly narrows the doorway. The width of a standard opening is 80 cm. If you insert a classic door into it, the width will be 79 cm, the opening will remain wide enough. If a sliding door is inserted into this opening, then its width will decrease by approximately 8 cm, due to the fact that part of the door will protrude into this opening, since it has a door handle that cannot be hidden behind a false wall, since with its help the door opens. This nuance is not very noticeable in a spacious room. But if you live in a cramped apartment, where every free centimeter is worth its weight in gold, and you want to put a sliding door in a narrow corridor, then this idea can narrow the already narrow passage to 60 cm, which is very unreasonable in terms of saving free space.
Dust control
Another intractable problem of sliding doors is the accumulation of a large amount of dust between the main wall and the false wall (the gap in which the door hides), which is very difficult to get rid of. To do this, the entire structure must be disassembled, the canvas removed from the rails, after which it is already possible to get to this dust, which has accumulated a huge amount there, which is very harmful to human health. Since the disassembly of the structure is quite laborious, it is produced very rarely, therefore, a huge amount of dust accumulates there. Because of this, healthy sleep may worsen, residents begin to sneeze and cough, to say nothing of allergy sufferers, whose life will become simply unbearable in such conditions! And in another way to get rid of dust is simply impossible. The only correct solution to this problem is to replace sliding doors with ordinary classic ones. This will not only save the tenants from dust, but also add 10 cm of the vacant room area.
And now we got to the most important and significant reason why you should not install sliding doors. As a rule, the company that installs this structure takes on a guarantee for the maintenance of this structure. But it just so happens that such doors break very often, and their repair is not very cheap. Therefore, it is very unprofitable for firms to engage in repairs of such structures, since often the cost of these repairs is more expensive than the installation of a sliding door structure. A few years after installation, the structure begins to literally crumble. The rollers become unusable and fall apart, and the most annoying thing is that the stoppers and closers that keep the doors closed or open break. That is, all mechanisms fail one by one. As practice has shown, it is very easy to break these mechanisms, it is enough just to slam the doors harder than usual. And imagine how much effort you need to make to disassemble the structure and get to the distant mechanism that has failed!
Here is a rough list of upcoming work:
- Remove all furniture;
- Remove the ceiling
- Remove floor covering
- Dismantle the false wall.
Only then can you get to the breakdown in order to fix it.
Then all the work must be done again in the reverse order: assemble the false wall, lay the flooring, return the ceiling to its place, bring furniture into the room.
If such breakdowns occur very often, then you will have to think about the rationality of using such a design.
For this reason, sliding doors quickly lost recognition both among the customer and among manufacturers.
Reliable classic doors with good sound insulation again came out on top in popularity among modern interior doors. After all, there is nothing more reliable than the old proven classic version, which has been repeatedly confirmed in practice.
Based on the foregoing, it is important to draw the right conclusions, and when making repairs in your apartment, do not chase after fashion, but weigh all the pros and cons when installing both interior doors and other interior elements, which will make your life in this house is calm and pleasant.
A well-known problem is small apartments. A good solution - compartment doors - is not always suitable: sometimes there is so little space that all the walls are lined with furniture and there is nowhere to move the canvas. But if the partition is not load-bearing and can be partially dismantled, then there is still an option: sliding doors that slide into the wall.
Structurally, the built-in interior doors do not differ from the coupe, they are based on the same components: a canvas (one or two), guide rails, carriages with rollers and fittings. If desired, an electric drive. The only difference is that when you open the canvas is hidden from the eyes. In the converted section of the wall there is a cassette into which a door slides on rollers.
The canvas itself can be anything: wood, glass, plastic. You can choose an option that will be in perfect harmony with the rest of the doors and the interior as a whole. The roller mechanism also does not differ from the standard one.
The difference is in fittings: locks and handles should not interfere with the displacement of the canvas into the wall. With handles and locks you need to decide in advance. If the sliding door into the wall will go completely, a lock with a button will be required to close.
The second difference is that sliding doors that slide into the wall require a greater energy intensity of installation than a compartment. It is necessary to dismantle part of the wall, fix the cassette, sheathe the structure with plasterboard and complete the repair with a finishing touch. There will be a lot of construction debris, you need to prepare for this in advance.
It is better to buy built-in doors in the wall immediately complete with a cassette. Buying a cassette later and installing it separately will turn out to be too expensive and energy-intensive. The pencil case door kit already has everything you need - a canvas, mechanism, fittings and a cassette.
Attention: for partitions made of brick and drywall, pencil cases are different. This must be specified at the time of purchase.
Installation sequence
1. Check the verticality of the walls and carefully calculate the opening (two widths of the canvas).
2. Dismantle the required area, if possible without unnecessary damage.
3. Process the opening, repair cracks.
4. Install the pencil case and secure with the help of mortgages. The upper mortgages will serve as a reliable fixation of the canvas, preventing displacement of the structure.
5. Sew up the cassette with drywall: the upper edge is placed along the enclosing box.
6. Install built-in doors and fittings.
7. Finish the wall.
8. Install platbands.
Sliding doors that slide into the wall are a good option to save space occupied by a regular door, but they take away 10 centimeters of the thickness of the room due to the cassette. Therefore, the ideal option for their installation is to mount built-in doors instead of self-supporting walls.
Among all door designs, sliding doors are in great demand. Such products, the prices of which vary, have many advantages. However, any interior doors have disadvantages that should be remembered in the selection process.
Advantages and disadvantages
Due to the presence of hinges, traditional swing doors always open in one direction. To install such a structure, you must have free space. Therefore, many people prefer sliding products. This is a sash system or a wooden sheet that provides aperture opening and closing using linear displacement.
To appreciate such an interior door, you need to pay attention to its advantages.
Naturally, at any interior doors has a number of shortcomings.
- Impossibility of tight cover. This is the most important downside. It is not only in the rotary design.
- Due to a bad vestibule, there is insufficient sound insulation. Moreover, heat can quickly escape through such a door.
- As a rule, the guides are located at the top, and an emphasis is provided at the bottom. Because of this, the door can sometimes jam.
- Such a design is considered not very durable, because over time it becomes loose. The only exceptions are cassette sliding doors and compartments.
Main varieties and prices
Any door structures can be classified according to several criteria. The most important is classification by way of opening.
To create any interior doors, different materials are used. The most common is natural wood or MDF. You can also find glass varieties, thanks to the use of which it will be possible to visually increase the space. In any case, it is necessary to pay attention to the quality of the material, and only then to the design.
If we talk about the price, then the most budgetary options are made of wood and MDF. Their cost is 7-13 thousand rubles. The price of glass structures is higher. Such products will cost 10-20 thousand rubles. The minimum cost of sliding doors is about 5 thousand rubles, and the most expensive products cost 25-30 thousand rubles. Such a high price is due to the use of exotic wood, as well as bronze and silver inserts. As a rule, such doors are made to order.
Do-it-yourself construction installation
With basic building experience install the product yourself.
Sliding interior doors are the best option for rooms where there is little free space. You can do the installation of such a design with your own hands. If done correctly, the door leaf will easy to follow the guide, which will ensure the convenience of using the whole structure.
In an effort to make the house more comfortable and cozy, the idea often comes up to replace ordinary swing doors with sliding doors (they are also called retractable, sliding, hanging). The good news is that you can install sliding doors with your own hands without any problems. The bad news is that a normal mechanism costs about the same as a quality canvas. Bribes in them is the moment that in the open state they almost do not “eat up” space. They either hide in the wall (the best, but more difficult option to implement), or move along it.
All this is true, but there is a significant disadvantage - a very low degree of sound insulation, especially in the variant of the compartment door. When the canvas just covers the opening. When installed in a pencil case (into a wall), the situation is slightly better, but the degree of sound insulation of a hinged door cannot be achieved even with this installation method. If all this does not scare you, you can study the systems, choose, and then install.
Sliding door systems
There are two types of mechanisms: suspended and rail. Both are not ideal. Briefly about their advantages and disadvantages - below.
Suspension system on top rail
The suspension mechanism is a carrier beam, to which a guide is attached in the form of the letter "P" with "legs" bent inward. The rollers to which the door leaf is attached move along this guide. In technical terms, this is a hanging door on the top rail.
When installing such a door, the floor under the door remains smooth, only the lower roller is installed on the right and / or left in the doorway. It slides along the groove made in the bottom end of the canvas. It is necessary so that when moving it does not deviate vertically. This design is the easiest to install. Installation is very simple and consists of several steps:
That's all. Roller doors installed. But this system, in this form, as in the photo, has very low noise isolation characteristics. They are practically zero: the passage is simply blocked.
Rail sliding doors
This type of door has two rails: top and bottom. The rollers are also installed at the top and bottom. Thanks to this design, the system has a high degree of rigidity: it can be shaken, and this will not cause much damage.
Minus the rails in the floor is known: the complexity of cleaning. Debris and dust constantly gets into the grooves, you have to monitor their cleanliness. This type of door is most often used in cabinets,. They are installed as interior doors if mobile children grow up in the family. Then safety is more important than the difficulties with cleaning.
Mounting options
Regardless of the sliding door system, installation methods can be:
The easiest installation option is compartment doors. They can be installed independently, and not only at the stage of repair, but also after it. It is only important that the opening is even, and the wall has a normal bearing capacity. The disadvantage of such a system is that you can’t put anything close to the wall in the place where the door rolls back. There is one more thing: very low sound insulation. It's easy to explain: if you look from the end, there is a gap of several millimeters on the sides. It is necessary so that the canvas does not “shuffle” along the wall. And all sounds perfectly penetrate through it, becoming only a little quieter.
Cassette doors are good because in the open state the leaf is in the niche of the wall and does not interfere. The second plus is that seals can be installed around the perimeter of the opening, which give much higher sound insulation performance. The disadvantage of installing a sliding door in a niche is that it can only be done at the repair stage. The second drawback: to make a pencil case for sliding doors, they usually put a false wall, and this is stolen centimeters of area.
Cascading - one of the varieties of compartment doors. It just has more guides: according to the number of movable door panels. Installation is perhaps the most difficult: a lot of details and high accuracy of installation is required. The systems are classified as elite, and they rarely save on installation: repairs will cost more.
Features and installation procedure
You can install sliding doors with your own hands even without much experience. It is quite possible to do without installers. It will take a little time, and also - installation instructions. We will try to give a detailed description of the process with photo and video materials.
Self-installation of sliding interior sliding doors
The systems may differ slightly, but the general rules remain the same. There are several requirements that must be met prior to installation:
- The opening must be even, otherwise you will have to take a canvas that covers all deviations with a margin.
- The bearing capacity of the sides of the doorway should be high, as well as the wall above it.
- The opening should already be finished: plastered and painted, wallpapered or decorated with decorative panels.
Next, let's start assembling. You can attach videos first. Different manufacturers have their own recommendations. Some recommend retreating from the edge 1/6 of the width of the door leaf, in other systems they are attached immediately from the edge, and the mounting plates provide the indent. We install such a system: in it, roller platforms are installed immediately from the corner.
Marking the location of the rollers
We center them, measuring so that the distances are the same. Having exposed the plate, with a pencil or marker we outline the places for the fasteners. We drill holes in the marked places. The diameter of the drill is 1 mm smaller than the diameter of the self-tapping screw.
We expose the plates, screw in the screws. The length of the fastener depends on the weight of the canvas, but not less than 70 mm. We twist them exactly perpendicularly, otherwise unnecessary stresses will arise.
Installing rollers
Supports for rollers are inserted into the installed plates. They are fixed with a cover on the side surface. Next, roller platforms are screwed onto the threaded pins.
It is also convenient to install handles and locks before hanging. They need special, mortise. If you bought a ready-made kit, the required holes are available. If you have adapted an ordinary canvas, you will have to trace the outline with a pencil, and remove the excess with a chisel. After the handle or lock enters the recess, the attachment points are marked, holes are drilled under them and fittings are installed.
The most convenient way is to hang sliding doors on a dry wooden beam. Its cross section is less than 50 * 70 mm, its length is twice the width of the door leaf + 5 cm. We cut off the guide of the same length.
Having placed the guide along the bar, it is attached to the bar with self-tapping screws at least 8 cm long. The number of fasteners - at least three - departing 10 cm from the edges and in the middle (more often, less often - no).
Now you can measure at what height to mount the beam. A guide with a bar is “rolled” on the door with installed rollers. So you can accurately note how high the doors turned out. We drill at least four holes in the side face of the beam for fastening to the wall.
The guide with a bar "rolls" on the rollers on the door
7-10 mm are added to the mark obtained - the doors should hang, and not shuffle on the floor. 7 mm is the minimum gap that is sufficient if there are no floor coverings in the opening. If they are supposed (later lay laminate, carpet, linoleum, etc.), then the thickness of these coatings must also be taken into account.
So that the canvas does not “walk” during installation, it is jammed with small wooden wedges. You need at least two stops - near both rollers.
Having attached the beam to the wall and correcting its position with the help of a level, we mark its position with a pencil. If the wall allows, you can fasten it to the wall through, but take self-tapping screws with a length of at least 120 mm for this, or better, put it on anchor bolts.
If the wall, for example, is concrete, the installation of dowels is required. To do this, you need to transfer the marks under the fasteners to the wall. This can be done using a thin and long drill, the diameter of which is smaller than the drilled hole.
An even simpler option: a long thin nail. It is inserted into the hole and a mark is made on the wall with a couple of blows. Further, the procedure is known: we drill holes for the plugs of the dowels, insert the plugs, if necessary, hammering them. Then we install the doors.
Attaching sliding doors to the wall
Stoppers must be fixed along the edges of the guide. They are brought in from the sides, the required location is established empirically (so that the canvas covers the opening completely in the closed state, and rolls back sufficiently when opened. They are fixed with clamping screws.
Having opened the doors, we install a flag roller on the floor. It goes into a groove sawn at the bottom of the canvas. It is necessary so that the doors do not deviate vertically.
First, we insert it into the groove, mark the holes for fasteners, drill, then fix it with short self-tapping screws (length about 15-20 mm).
On this we can assume that the sliding doors have been installed. They are already fully functional. Remaining finishing work. The mounting bar with the guide is closed with a decorative trim matched to the tone of the door leaf. It can be nailed directly to the beam with finishing nails.
Only when you expose it, make sure that the wheels are closed. So much more beautiful)) Now - that's it, you installed the sliding doors with your own hands.
See below for a video tutorial on installing such a door. There are several installation options.
We mount cassette-type sliding doors (in a case)
The process of mounting the guide, hanging the door leaf almost one to one repeats those described above. There is no need only for finishing, and all other steps are necessary. Instead of mounting a decorative strip, a false wall is mounted at a distance of at least 10 cm from the wall. Usually it is made of plasterboard profiles, which are sheathed with wall plasterboard. But this is not important - you can use GVL or plywood, any other suitable material.
Where does the distance of 10 cm come from? The thickness of the door leaf and the gaps on both sides are 5 cm. A minimum of 5 cm is added to them for installing the profile. So it turns out 10 cm.
Since the main load will fall on the wall, the profile frame can not be reinforced. If such a wall does not seem very reliable to you, you can insert wooden bars inside, which you can fasten with self-tapping screws. This will make the structure very rigid.
The basic principles for calculating the case for a sliding door, as well as the marking features, the principles for preparing the doorway for installation, see the video.
Homemade sliding doors
Any door leaf can be mounted on rollers and will work as a sliding door. The guide and all other components - rollers (carrier and flag), stoppers, stops - can be bought. Hang on them at least a piece of plywood or a door assembled from several boards. This is the easiest and cheapest option. But to make a mechanism on your own is already a more difficult task. One of the options for a sliding door mechanism made from improvised materials (from round pipes of different diameters) in the video. The system was supposed to be installed in a closet, but judging by designs, easy can withstand even an oak door from an array.