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

With UNION, we share what's important to consider when choosing interior doors, the advantages of hidden installation, and new materials and decorative solutions available on the market. After all, modern technologies give interior doors much more capabilities than just dividing or combining spaces.

Selecting the Design

All interior doors are mainly categorized into hinged and sliding doors. Let's look at them in more detail.

Hinged Doors

Based on installation method, hinged doors come in two types: hidden or with thresholds. The main difference is that doors with thresholds can be installed after finishing work.

If you choose doors with a hidden frame, you must prepare the walls specially for installation. However, the result is completely different: such doors look much more stylish, and there are far more possibilities for transforming space with them.

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

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

Hidden installation doors can be either ready for on-site finishing or fully operational.

Since these doors have no thresholds, and their shape can be non-standard, 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 completely blend into the space. Alternatively, it can be highlighted and made a focal point—glass, veneer, or painted.

Sliding Doors

Sliding interior doors are probably the most convenient way to zone a room. They make the space open, bright, and divide it into functional zones. Especially since there is a wide variety of materials that allow matching the door panels to almost any interior style.

Sliding doors can consist of two, three, or more panels, each up to three meters in height and 1.3 meters wide. This allows them to cover nearly any opening. The door structure 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 interiors. Let's examine this topic more closely.

Doors with Visible Tracks

With such installations, a hanging mechanism is mounted above the opening, which moves the door panel. The main advantage of hanging doors is ease and simplicity 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 door panel moves, is built into the ceiling. To install it, the opening must be specially prepared during the rough construction phase.

Doors Inside the Wall

Interior doors slide into a special cassette inside the wall. This type of door looks unique and also saves space significantly.

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

Magic Track

A striking solution in the sliding interior door market: the special Magic track is mounted along the wall behind the door panel and is completely hidden from view, creating an effect of the door floating in air.

Selecting the Material

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

Glass

Glazed door panels require no special maintenance: they are easy to clean with regular cleaning agents. Glass doors can be tinted, painted in various colors with matte or glossy finishes, or have metallic reflections.

Paint

Interior doors with paint have many advantages: they are practical, easy to maintain, and resistant to external influences. In UNION, water-based lacquers and paints are used in manufacturing, making the doors completely safe for health and not harmful to the environment.

Veneer

Natural veneer is a thin slice of valuable wood species: oak, walnut, beech, and others. Visually, such a door is indistinguishable from solid wood, but it is much lighter in weight and significantly cheaper.

Stone

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

This door looks exceptionally stylish! And due to the variety of colors and shades, it fits perfectly into a modern interior style, loft, or eco-minimalist design.

Paintable Door

During sale, the door panel and frame of such doors will be 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 hidden frames.

Interesting Solutions

Planarity

A pleasant addition is the possibility of installing adjacent doors with different opening directions—outward or inward. This is relevant when room layout doesn't allow opening doors in one direction, and a uniform plane of the door with the wall is needed. This is called planarity.

Planarity is a special aesthetic of minimalism where the door and wall lie 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 a single plane. The door opens easily to 180 degrees.

Double Glazing

Despite other benefits of glass doors, panels with double glazing FLY also have enhanced sound insulation. It can be safely installed in a bedroom or children's room.

Missing Upper Part of the Frame

In this design, the door is mounted directly into the ceiling without an upper lintel, just like with thresholds or in a hidden frame. Many designers use this to emphasize and visually increase ceiling height in the room.

Aesthetics

Hidden Baseboard

Not only the door and wall, but also the baseboard can be in one plane. For this purpose, it is mounted on a special aluminum profile embedded in the wall and does not protrude beyond it.

Handle in Profile Color

Elaborate handles and locks have given way 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 interiors.

"Floating Door"

The door is installed in the opening using a surface frame and special thresholds that have a gap from the wall. Lighting is mounted around this gap all around the door opening. This creates an illusion that the door floats in air.