Choosing Interior Doors: What's New on the Market?

With UNION, we explain what to consider when choosing interior doors, the advantages of hidden installation, and what new materials and decorative solutions are available on the market. After all, modern technologies endow interior doors with far more capabilities than just dividing or combining space.

Selecting the Design

All interior doors can be divided into swing and sliding based on their main functionality. Let's look at them in detail.

Swing Doors

Swing doors come in two types based on installation method: hidden or with thresholds. The main difference is that doors with thresholds can be installed after finish decoration.

If you choose doors with a hidden frame, you need to specially prepare the walls for installation. However, the result is completely different: such doors look much more impressive, and there are far more opportunities for space transformation with them.

With Thresholds. Thresholds are strips that close the gap between the edge of the door frame and the wall it adjoins. If the wall opening is non-standard—for example, the wall is thicker than the frame width—special strips are used to fill the missing volume. These boards are attached to the frame and fill in the gap.

Hidden Type. The absence of visible frames, thresholds, and hinges, along with a wide selection of finishes, makes hidden doors a convenient and minimalist solution.

Hidden frame doors can be either installed in place or fully ready for use.

Since such doors lack thresholds and can have various shapes, they can be installed almost anywhere—under a staircase or in a room with a slanted ceiling.

A "hidden" door can be painted or decorated to match the wall color and blend into the space completely. Alternatively, it can stand out and serve as an accent—glass, veneer, or enamel finish.

Sliding Doors

Sliding interior doors are probably the most convenient way to zone a space. They keep the area open, bright, and divide it into functional zones. Moreover, with a wide range of materials, they can suit almost any interior style.

Sliding doors may consist of two, three, or more panels, each up to 3 meters in height and 1.3 meters wide. This allows them to cover almost any opening. The door assembly can be installed either inside the opening or niche, or move along the wall or slide into it, without taking up extra space.

The mounting system can be visible or hidden—perfect for minimalist interior design. Let's examine this topic in more detail.

Doors with Visible Tracks

With this installation, a suspended mechanism is mounted above the opening, and the door panel slides along it. The main advantage of suspended doors is convenience and ease of installation and use. These doors can be mounted after finishing work in any opening or niche.

Doors with Hidden Tracks

This sliding mechanism is visually invisible: the hidden track, along which the panel moves, is built into the ceiling. To install it, you need to prepare the opening in a special way during the rough finishing stage.

Doors Inside the Wall

An interior door slides into a special cassette or tray inside the wall. Such doors look unique and also save space.

Installation of this type of door also needs to be planned in advance and walls prepared accordingly.

Magic Track

An impressive solution in the market for sliding interior doors: the special Magic track is mounted along the wall behind the door panel, and is completely hidden from view from the outside, creating a floating effect.

Selecting Materials

The frame (or casing) of all modern doors is made from either wood or aluminum—a strong and lightweight material. The finish can vary: glass, veneer, stone, or enamel. What are their unique features?

Glass

Glass door panels require no special care: they are easy to clean with regular cleaning products. A glass door can be tinted, painted in various colors with a matte or glossy finish, or have a metallic sheen.

Enamel

Interior doors with enamel coating offer many advantages: they are practical, easy to maintain, and resistant to external impacts. At UNION, we use water-based lacquers and paints in manufacturing these doors, ensuring they are completely safe for health and do not harm the environment.

Veneer

Natural veneer is a thin slice of valuable wood species such as oak, walnut, beech, and others. Visually, such a door is indistinguishable from a solid wood door, but it weighs much less. The price is also significantly lower.

Stone

A 2020 trend, "stone doors" are made from ceramic granite, which under high pressure becomes exceptionally durable and resistant to mechanical damage—scratches and chips.

This door looks incredibly impressive! With a variety of colors and shades, it fits perfectly into modern or loft-style interiors or eco-friendly minimalist design.

Paintable Doors

During sale, the door panel and frame of such doors are primed. It is assumed that after installation, the panel will be painted, covered with wallpaper, or decorated with plaster. These doors are often installed in a hidden frame.

Interesting Solutions

Planarity

A pleasant addition is the ability to install adjacent doors with different opening directions—outward or inward. This is particularly useful when the room layout doesn't allow doors to open in one direction, but you need to maintain a uniform plane of the doors and wall. This is called planarity.

Planarity is a special aesthetic of minimalism, where the door panel and wall are in the same plane.

Invisible Hinges

Special hinges that are completely hidden in the frame and not visible from the outside—this makes the door panel and wall one flat surface. The door easily opens to 180 degrees.

Double Glazing

Despite all the benefits of glass doors, panels with double glazing FLY offer even better sound insulation. These can be safely installed in a bedroom or children's room.

No Top Section of the Frame

In this design, the door is mounted directly into the ceiling, without a top header, whether with thresholds or in a hidden frame. Many designers use this to emphasize and visually increase ceiling height in a room.

Aesthetics

Hidden Skirting Board

The door and wall can be in the same plane not only visually but also with a skirting board. For this, it is attached to a special aluminum profile embedded in the wall and does not protrude from it.

Handle in Matching Profile Color

Elaborate handles and locks have moved to the second plan and yielded to minimalist design. Modern technology allows even the handle to incorporate material from the door panel—be it wood or even stone. An original solution for loft or minimalist-style interiors.

"Floating Door"

The door is installed in the opening using a mounting frame and special thresholds that have a gap from the wall. Lighting is mounted around the entire perimeter of the door opening. Due to this, it visually appears as if the door is floating in the air.