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Replacing the doors in the house is a serious undertaking that requires a balanced approach. Particular attention should be paid to wet areas. Not all materials can be used there. Choosing doors for the bathroom and toilet is far from easy, as many nuances must be taken into account.
Requirements
Doors to the bathroom and toilet are chosen not only in appearance. Their properties must also be taken into account. In bathrooms, high humidity is not uncommon, so moisture resistance is an important characteristic. Equally important is the good tolerance of wet cleaning. This is another selection criterion. Durability and reliability are also important. Also important are properties such as sound insulation and low thermal conductivity. In the bathroom, we feel comfortable at a higher temperature, and it is easier to create it with a door that has good thermal insulation.
There are also technical nuances. According to building standards, the doors to the bathroom and toilet can be made narrower than to living quarters. This is exactly the situation in apartment buildings. In private houses and cottages, this rule is rarely followed, and when repairing or redevelopment of apartments, doorways of ordinary sizes are often also made.
There is another nuance. Well-functioning ventilation is required to quickly remove moist air. It can be natural or forced (with a fan), but for it to work well, there must be an influx of fresh air into the bathroom. To open access to air, the door leaf is made 1,5-2 cm shorter, leaving a gap in the floor area. It just sounds scary, but in practice this gap is almost invisible. The second way to ensure air flow is through special ventilation grilles that are built into the door leaf. And the third is the supply holes in the wall. Of all the options, it is the idea with a gap near the floor that is the least striking. It is also the easiest to implement.
What are the doors for the bathroom and toilet
Even the most ordinary doors are placed in the bathroom and toilet – wooden or paneled (wood frame with plywood inserts), painted with paint. With well-functioning ventilation, they serve well, only few people like them. Therefore, they prefer to replace them with new, more modern ones.
Wooden and veneered
Solid wood doors are undoubtedly beautiful, but also expensive. They are placed in a damp room if they are covered with a layer of varnish. In this case, manufacturers in the description usually indicate that they are “waterproof”. Provided that a good varnish is used and it is correctly applied, the coating protects against moisture and washes well. If necessary, the varnish layer can be updated, although this operation will not be required soon.
Veneered doors are made from inexpensive low-grade wood, and then pasted over with expensive veneer. A veneer is a thin saw cut of a tree – a few millimeters thick. The presence of glue makes veneered doors not quite “natural”, but at the same time protects the wood from swelling. However, veneer doors for bathrooms and toilets are not the best choice, because the veneer is not airtight, moisture penetrates into the smallest cracks, which causes the surface to warp and the veneer begins to peel off.
Not so long ago, doors finished with euro veneer appeared. This is a new material consisting of wood and a binder. Colored wood fibers are mixed with a synthetic binder. This mixture is forced through a powerful press and comes out in the form of a ribbon. In appearance, the resulting material is practically indistinguishable from natural veneer, and surpasses it in performance properties. Doors finished with euroveneer are not afraid of high humidity, the coating has high mechanical strength and does not fade in the sun. You can distinguish them by touch – too smooth coating.
If we talk about other characteristics, it can be noted that wooden and veneered doors for the bathroom and toilet have low thermal conductivity and protect well from noise. They tolerate wet cleaning, but with a soft cloth and without aggressive detergents.
Plastic and metal-plastic
Plastic doors to the bathroom – an economy option. They are inexpensive, they are not at all afraid of water in any of its conditions, they are not deformed by high humidity. Their disadvantages are that they are made from unnatural raw materials, inexpensive models have low mechanical strength. It is also worth remembering that they cannot, like wood or veneer doors, be “fitted” to the desired size.
Metal-plastic doors in the apartment bathroom are rarely installed. But not because they don’t fit. Rather, they are not used for aesthetic reasons – their appearance is very different. If doors made of other materials are installed in other rooms, it is very difficult to choose a more or less suitable color. Another deterrent is the high price. And the features are better than you can imagine.
Glass
Glass – not very popular as doors, but has good characteristics. It does not react to water and high humidity, it does not rot and you can wash it as much as you like. They have one drawback – fragility, but modern technology has overcome it – the glass is made tempered, which gives it increased strength. There is also laminated glass (duplex and triplex). This is when sheets of glass are glued with a reinforcing film.
It is possible to break a glass door leaf, but it is difficult to do it, and if it does, the glass breaks into many small fragments with smooth, not sharp edges. In the case of laminated glass, the fragments hang on the film, and the tempered glass simply breaks into small fragments, but you have to try hard to get hurt by such fragments. The only trouble from such an event is the need to buy a new door.
Glass doors for the bathroom and toilet are made opaque. They are tinted, can be mirror coated or stained glass painting. All that is visible through such doors is a blurry silhouette and no specifics. In general, a good option if the family does not have small children.
Laminated and PVC
Another inexpensive option for bathroom doors is laminated film. The door leaf itself is made using frame technology. The frame is made of pine timber, the gaps are filled with soundproofing material (the cheapest ones are corrugated cardboard, the more expensive ones are polyurethane foam), after that they are sheathed with laminated fiberboard or MDF. The surface of the door can be decorated to look like wood, it can be smooth (much less common).
The door leaf is light, but it does not tolerate shock loads very well. With good quality lamination, such a door to the bathroom and toilet is not afraid of moisture, and it can be washed well (with a damp soft cloth with liquid non-aggressive detergents). As long as the lamination remains intact, it looks quite decent. With intensive use, the film is erased and the appearance deteriorates noticeably.
PVC bathroom doors are made using the same technology. The only difference is that the frame is sheathed with extruded PVC. The density and strength of PVC are many times higher, so the durability is also higher. Performance is also better: vinyl is not afraid of water in any form, so for the bathroom and toilet it is a great option.
Combined
When they say combined doors, they most often mean that they have inserts of a different material. And most often it is glass inserts. Glass sizes can vary greatly. It can be a narrow strip along one of the edges or a large piece for half the door. Glass is also used opaque, tempered or laminated. If the glass in the model you like is too transparent, you can stick a self-adhesive stained glass or translucent film on it.
Glass inserts are made in wooden, metal-plastic and veneered doors. Less often – in MDF and almost never – in plastic. But the most interesting design models are found in this category – more room for imagination.
Opening systems
In addition to different materials, bathroom and toilet doors can have different types of opening. The usual option for us is swing doors. They are good for everyone, except that in the open state they cover a solid gap of space.
Sliding doors are becoming more and more popular in recent years. This is when a bar is attached to the top of the door, rollers are attached to the door leaf, the doors roll along this bar. According to the method of mounting the guide, sliding doors are open and secret. Open – when the bar is attached to the wall on one side, and the canvas rides along the wall. With a hidden system, a niche is made in the wall into which the door leaf drives in.
The second option in the open form takes up almost no space, but during installation it requires serious intervention in the wall structure, which is far from always possible. It is unlikely that it will be possible to hollow out a niche of the required size in a concrete or even brick partition. Then, in order to hide the canvas, they build a false wall of drywall.
The disadvantage of sliding doors is a more complicated installation, and open systems have a low degree of sound insulation (the canvas simply hangs along the doorway, solid gaps remain). In secret systems, everything is better in this regard – there is a door frame, with a groove into which the door leaf enters and a seal in this groove. Such systems have good sound insulation, but are expensive.
Another type of door is folding. There are two types – “book” and “accordion”. Doors-book have a door leaf, consisting of several parts. These parts are movably connected; when opened, they fold, resembling a book. Accordion doors have a similar structure, but fold differently: relative to an axis passing through the center. Book doors are often made of glass, they can also be made of MDF or plastic, in accordion doors they are often made of plastic and they cost a little.