What images come to mind when you hear the words "barn door?" Perhaps you see an old wooden door, barely holding onto its hinges, installed onto a giant barn at a farm. While that image has a certain rustic charm, it isn't representative of what barn doors are in the modern house.
Today's barn doors are about style. They're built to exact specifications, and they exist to give you more options in rooms that have limited space or when you simply want to achieve a gorgeous aesthetic. But before deciding to give these stunning sliding doors a shot, you need to know more about them. This journey of discovery starts with a simple question.
What Is a Barn Door?
The term "barn door" represents as much an approach to design philosophy as it does a specific style of door. On the practical side, they're sliding doors that you install using a special track. The door hangs from this track, and when you need to open them, you simply slide the door to the side and use the built-in locks to keep it in place.
Concerning design, many people make the mistake of thinking that a barn door can only deliver a rustic look. While that can be the case – and wood is your friend if you want this look – today's barn doors often combine iron, steel, and glass to offer a more modern touch. That's especially the case with interior sliding barn doors, which often use the presence of windows (and the light they deliver) to accentuate a room's furniture.
So, what started as one of the most important fixtures for helping farms conduct their business has evolved into one of the most unique options you have for interior decor. Nevertheless, the basic concept remains the same: a barn door is a sliding door that hangs from a track.
How Are Barn Doors Different From Traditional Iron Doors
You can already see some of the ways that barn doors differ from regular iron doors. But the question remains: why hire somebody to install a barn door when regular doors cost less and are more familiar? It's a good question, and PINKYS can answer it by digging into the differences between the two to give you a better understanding of what barn doors can bring to your home.
Barn Doors Confront the Limited Wall Space Issue
You fit a regular door and it looks amazing when it's closed. But you didn't think the installation through, especially in terms of how it matches the rest of your home. The door opens, it hits your furniture, and you're suddenly confronted with the fact that you have limited wall space.
A barn door solves that problem through its mechanism; there's no swinging involved.
Those worries you have about handles denting walls or scraping against furniture are gone. The door complements the room (and the limited space it has) with no need for you to find workarounds or redesigns. You save space. You’ll save your furniture. Plus, the smashing swing of a traditional door is a problem no more.
You Get Stronger Hardware with a Barn Door
Before getting into this difference, it's important to make a point: a barn door with stronger hardware doesn't automatically make it more secure than a traditional iron door.
The hardware is a necessity born from design. Barn doors are heavy. Some weigh up to 800 pounds, and that weight is carried by a track built into the frame. That track needs to be strong enough to handle the door's weight because regular hinges and door fittings don't do the job.
You'll see this strength in the material used for barn doors. You'll also often find that you have to customize designs to account for the door's weight, allowing it to operate properly using hardware that's designed specifically for the door.
Interior Sliding Barn Doors Use a Track
The aforementioned "track" that holds a barn door points to another difference between them and regular iron doors. Barn doors slide rather than swing open. The metal track comes into play here again. There are no hinges with barn doors, so you may have to switch up your frame to get access to your room.
That tracker also needs space, about an inch of it between the door and the wall. You may have to fit a backing board onto your wall to create that space. Thankfully, that's a simple enough process, though it demonstrates that you'll often need more than a screwdriver to install barn doors.
A Barn Door Will Open and Close Differently from a Regular Iron Door
First, the obvious: barn doors slide, and regular irons doors swing. While that would make them terrible partners on the dancefloor, it also shows you a key difference that will figure into which style you decide to install.
Then, there's the lock.
The traditional lock you see on iron doors isn't always a good fit for barn doors. There are also locking mechanisms built into the track or onto a wall to keep your barn doors in place when they're open and shut. It's this unique locking method that makes barn doors more suitable for interior spaces than serving as exterior doors.
The Types of Barn Doors
You have options galore when choosing a barn door, especially when it comes to design. There's no single "type" of barn door. Additionally, you might find that some types work better than others, especially if your measurements reveal you need something taller or wider than you anticipated.
Sliding Barn Doors
As the most common types of barn doors, the sliding variety have all sorts of permutations. You could go down the wooden route, giving your home a rustic feel at the expense of modernism. Iron doors are great, too, though they add weight and put more stress on the track. Or you could go down the PINKYS route, combining an iron frame with glass panes.
The latter design choice works for so many reasons. Weight, and thus stress on the track, is minimized. Light streams into your rooms. Furthermore, the combination of glass and metal brings a modern look that complements the rest of your room.
If simplicity is what you desire, sliding barn doors are the solution.
Double Barn Doors
If one barn door is great, two must be better, right?
The answer could be "yes" or "no," and it depends entirely on your space. If your door frame isn't particularly large, adding a second door to the frame creates an encumbrance. Remember, the doors need to slide open. By fitting two into a space where they don't belong, you're actually limiting the space you have to walk through the doorway.
So, when are double barn doors a good idea? When size matters in the sense that you have a doorway that’s too wide or a single door to cover. Think large open-plan rooms with open doorways between them, and you have the idea. If there's a wide space that needs filling, double doors often do a better job than trying to customize a single door to fit the entire space.
Bifolding Barn Doors
Perhaps the traditional sliding method isn't for you. After all, the wall to the side of the door needs to offer enough room for the door to hang when it's open, which isn't always a possibility. The wall may be too narrow. Or you might not like the look of having a door seemingly suspended from your wall whenever it's open.
Bifold barn doors solve the problem by folding like an accordion as you open them. They're segmented, with each segment folding against the one next to it so the door hangs folded from the side of the doorway rather than flat against a wall.
But that design can create problems. Bifold doors protrude. If the space issue is about room space rather than wall space, you're not saving as much compared to a traditional door.
Bypassing Barn Doors
While you're not getting two doors for the price of one with bypassing barn doors, you are getting double doors that act like single doors. That might sound strange, but the secret lies in a clever design that changes the way double barn doors work.
Double barn doors are simple. Each door slides opens in the opposite direction and sits as a single door panel against each side of the doorway until you close the doors.
Bypassing doors sit on the same side of the wall, thanks to a clever mechanism that allows one door to lie on top of the other. They're like bifold doors, only without the accordion effect, and they're ideal for slotting a double door into a doorway that's too large for a single door but doesn't have the wall space for a pair of doors on either side.
The Benefits of Installing a Modern Barn Door
Granted, installing barn doors isn't as easy as fitting a regular door to a pair of hinges, but the installation isn't so complicated that you can't handle it. And it's clear there are plenty of sizes to choose from – single and double barn doors are available.
But what if you're still not quite convinced? You get how barn doors work, but you're still not sure if they'll fit the aesthetic you're trying to create. If that sounds like you, perhaps the benefits of the look and “feel” of barn doors might change your mind.
Create a Unique Space in Your Home with the Perfect Barn Door
Traditional can feel boring to some. But many others prefer something familiar that sprinkles uniqueness into the mix through design. This may include you – you may be ready for doors that work differently from any you've used before.
Barn doors can be that “difference” because they combine the look and feel of a regular door with the sort of sliding mechanism you often see for large glass exterior doors. Simply put: no other door looks quite like a barn door.
That interesting visual appeal starts with the track and continues with how the door hangs in the frame or rests against the wall. The potential for opening up your rooms is marvelous. You don't have to worry about where you can hang pictures or the placement of furniture because there's no swinging door to swing open and possibly damage anything in the room.
Choose Between Different Styles and Aesthetics
Color, fit, and style are all things you control with a barn door. That means you can match how the door looks and feels to the aesthetic you're trying to create in your room.
Take PINKYS' range of barn doors as an example. If you're looking for something that has a segmented look, with the frame slipping between the glass, the Air 5 is ideal with its regimented patchwork design. Do you prefer more light to enter your room? The Air Lite Interior barn door is a single glass pane enshrined in an attractive iron frame that allows light to stream through.
The point is that you have options. With PINKYS, those options extend to the door's color as well as its design. Beyond beautiful black, our barn doors are available in startling, brushed silver, powerful pewter, and even classic oil-brushed bronze.
Ensure Your Saving Space with Your Door
We now come back to one of the chief reasons most have for choosing a barn door: it saves space.
Gone are the swinging doors that can be cumbersome when you're trying to make the most out of a room, only to find you have to account for space the door needs when it swings open when decorating. But that's not all these space-savers can help with. Do you have a small alcove and want a little privacy? Barn doors are a good answer there, as they are perfect for rooms with limited space.
There are also options for how you save space. Bi-folding barn doors close differently from regular sliding doors, creating a folded look that can appeal to the eye. Bypassing doors are great, too, especially if you have a doorway wide enough for double doors and limited space.
Installation Is Simple Thanks to the Frame
Barn doors aren't as easy to install as traditional iron doors. There's no getting around that fact. You can't simply measure the door to size and fit it to a pair of hinges that are already built into the frame. But that also doesn't mean that barn doors are difficult to install.
In fact, the track makes fitting these doors surprisingly easy. Yes, you'll need to measure your frame for an appropriate fit and may have to install a backing border onto which you can fit the frame. But both are simple jobs (DIYers can handle them with few issues), and the tracks you receive with your barn door are customized to ensure the doors slide along them with no issues.
In other words, you don't have to make wholesale changes to your room to fit barn doors. Some changes are required, but that's a given due to the different mechanisms in barn doors and traditional doors. But those changes aren't so extensive that they'll cost you an arm and a leg just so you can have barn doors in your home.
Bring the Barn Door Experience Home with PINKYS Iron Doors
By now, you have a good idea of whether a barn door is right for your interior space. You know how they work. You know the types available. You understand that you can customize every aspect of the door, from size to color, to fit both your space and your aesthetic.
There's just one more question to answer: why PINKYS?
We can give you a few reasons.
Customized To Suit You
PINKYS has barn doors both in stock and available for special order. You can customize any of them with different colors, glass types, and sizes. But what if you want something unique to your home? We can help there, too, as we build custom barn doors designed based on what you want to achieve.
High-Grade Architecture
PINKYS doesn't take a slapdash approach to door design. We draw inspiration from everything around us, from the trends adopted by the greatest interior designers to the beautiful sunsets in our California home. The result is high-grade architecture using the best materials and doors designed for visual astonishment as much as for practicality.
Open a Breath of Fresh Air with PINKYS
Vibrant. Inspired. Fresh. This is just a selection of the words used to describe a PINKYS door. We strive to make each door feel as fresh as the air you breathe when you escape the city and nestle deep within nature.
Are you ready to breathe some barn door-inspired fresh air? Start by looking at the PINKYS barn door selection, featuring three of our most beloved designs, and move forward from there. If you're happy with what you see, we're ready to take your special order. But if you have something different in mind, customize your barn doors with PINKYS and give your home a breath of fresh air.
