apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Two words: pocket doors.

I have a pair of french doors to the "bedroom" half of my studio apartment.

One of them swings to overlap the left half of the closet in my bedroom, and fairly close to the wall. Luckily, I suppose, I can put a table there (never thought to before, actually), because it's a pair of doors and I don't need to use both unless I'm moving or rearranging or whatever massive decluttering... when it swings out into the small office/foyer, it doesn't interfere with the entrance door directly, but it's right in my face if I walk in and it's open in that direction. The other side blocks the way to the bathroom, so not exactly bumping into anything but air.

I wouldn't go so far as to call doors opening into the bedrooms a "flaw," though, I can agree it can sometimes be an inconvenience. Imagine how much space I could take up inside my apartment door if I could flip the hinges so it would open up into the hallway, but it's not what I would consider a flaw. Hinge pins on the exterior is a good way to take a door off and get inside if you have time to break in without a key in that fashion.

Pocket doors are no good if you are renting. I've resorted to door removal many times with tiny bedrooms and replaced it with an opaque curtain. I also had to remove the door to our current laundry room when the downstairs neighbor wouldn't stop closing the door, cutting the cats off from their littler box!

I agree this can be totally worth it to save the space where the door used to open into. I recently switched a door, although it was my bathroom door and I wanted it to open into the bathroom. It's not an option for renters but considering hanging doors can be really tricky and tedious, I decided to replace the whole door and jamb with a new pre-hung door. Because it's pre-hung I think this is much easier than trying to cut new hinge recesses, patch the old ones, and deal with hanging the door. The final product is much cleaner too. Door sizes are pretty standard, just make sure to measure carefully and make sure there's clearance. Of course, I didn't want the old door to go to waste so I sold it on Craigslist, which offset the cost a little too. In a perfect world I would have pocket doors but couldn't do that in this location.

correct me if I'm wrong, aren't there fire codes dictating which way a door is to swing into/out of a room?

No, there aren't code reasons for this - not in a residential bedroom for instance, they only apply for larger spaces which have a path of travel to the exit (though local codes/amendments may specify door swings).

Pocket doors can be a good solution as long as they are a thin wall model rather than something which will steal floor space.

Yes, it seems slightly ironic that this post appears so close to the "How to Evacuate Your Home" posting earlier today. The reason for having doors swing into bedrooms is so that they can be blocked closed by something right outside the bedroom door, trapping the occupants of the bedrooms. Now, there are perfectly good reasons for wanting to reverse doors, and it may make sense in some situations, but Grumpy Girl is right -- fire codes do generally have something to say about this, and for good reason. So, if you're thinking of doing this, you'll want to be sure to take into account escape routes.

Sorry, that should read, "the reason ... is so that they *cannot* be blocked closed ..."

Hollie, if a neighbor's cat was using our building's common areas as a toilet, I'd shut the door too. Perhaps you should consider keeping the "littler" box in your apartment.

Ugh - Who'd want to do laundry where the neighbor put their cat's nasty litter box? I'd close the door too...

I thought the litter box in the laundry room was odd as well. Why should the neighbor be subjected to the cat's waste?

Changing a door's swing isn't so simple as unscrewing the hinges from the jamb and reinstalling the door the other way in the opening. There's the door stop, catch plate, etc..

And I've worked in a lot of older houses where as the frame settled out of square, the doors sagged out of square right along with the frames, meaning that the door would only fit in the one opening, and in the one direction.

If one HAD to change the direction of a door's swing, one might well be better off removing the casings and jambs and reinstalling the whole setup in the other direction. But even then, this might not be too difficult in a newer residence with pre-hung doors, but might take expert skill to accomplish in an older residence.

Just to clarify the door-swing code issue: in Chicago (which is generally more restrictive than the more commonly used International Building Code), residential doors can swing either in or out, and some do both (think of a door/screen door combo). It's only in multi-unit dwellings that the doors to the outside (not the interior halls) swing out. The doors and walls of the hallways need to be of fire-resistive construction, but they generally can swing in. If they swing out into the hall they can't impinge on the code-required exit width (e.g. they're recessed into a niche if they swing out). Believe me, architects everywhere pore over the code daily to see how they can squeeze a few more inches of exit width out of a corridor so they can get more sf for the spaces inside!

One of the reasons for this is the low number of occupants found in these structures and their assumed familiarity with the layout--the chances of being crushed by a crowd trying to exit your bedroom through an in-swinging door are [fortunately?] [unfortunately?] pretty small, but there is a risk of smacking someone in the hallway with your bedroom door as they're trying to exit.

First rule of thumb for safe exiting (according to the code): Keep The Hallways Big & Clear.

As a designer, it drives me nuts when doors DON'T open into rooms like bathrooms and bedrooms. Why would you want to change this?

take the doors off or i agree with opening out of the room it does take up too much room. we just bought a samll one bedroom two bath in florida and will eventually put on a new bedroom until then its finding room for both of our things. its not easy, love impute on bedroom closets for small places. thanks

Does anyone have an idea where I can get the industrial felt for the felt sliding doors? I am living in a rental with no door to the master bath.
Thanks!

Wow, sorry to offend you with the placement of my litter. Its actually the perfect spot, the room is big and the floor is tile. The neighbor walks into my apartment to get to the laundry room, and I clean the room every day =)