Two of my bathrooms use pocket doors. The master has a double pocket at the entrance from the bedroom, and my DD's bathroom (a Hollywood bath) has a door to one room and a pocket door to the other.

The choice of pocket doors in the master was largely a style preference, but also functional - it's always better to save the room.

For my daughter's bathroom it was more necessity. Her bathroom is two spaces, vanities in one, and through another door to the tub + toilet. The pocket door prevents collision between the vanity and shower area doors since the door to the showers is on that side of the room. The other side can be a regular door since it's just wall there.

Ours have a latch that recesses. When withdrawn, it also serves as a handle. I don't know the brand of our door (it's a new construction so I don't know ALL the details, just most!) but they are wood and we had the option for several styles of glass inserts (went with solid wood).

My family isn't terribly picky about the bathroom door being latched shut - except my husband. In our case, to access either toilet requires a regular door to open. My daughter is 2 so we're going to be doing her showers for a while, so no privacy concerns there. Even when we aren't, there's still the second door you have to go through to get to her shower.

Pocket doors in red:

We've also used pocket doors a few places on other levels, but not bathrooms.

Thank you, avesmore-
How do you find the latching mechanism... is it a pain to use or easy enough?
I see a couple levels of latches available on line. The super flimsy hardware-store cheapies, then Emtek's $35 model, then the fancier ones by Emtek and others that cost over $100. I'm hoping the $35 model is good enough... what do you think?
Stacey

Hmm, I think they were the default on whatever door we ordered (we told our builder we wanted pocket doors, then just picked the style). I'll look through our specs and see if I can find a specific make or model.

We close next week, but have spent about 3 years looking into our builder's homes. I've used her pocket door latches at least 100 times. So far they are fine to use. I can't speak too much for how they hold up... :)

Stacey-- alot of new construction in this area these days are using the pocket doors on the bathrooms, especially one the size of the bathroom you're talking about, for the very same reason. I would imagine if there were problems with them, they wouldn't be nearly as popular with the GC crowd, just so they wouldn't be spending alot of "free" time fixing or replacing them.

Matter of fact, I just finished a home for the brother of one of the biggest home builders in the area (Chase, out of Windham), and every one of his bathrooms had pocket doors on them, from the master to the powder room.

One concern is how close the door can be to the floor. People have complained that their pocket door is an inch or so off the floor. That is fine if the door goes to a bedroom or just separate the toilet from sink area...but when this is a bathroom off a hallway, it may be a concern re: noise and privacy.

I looked at a few installed pocket doors while mulling over whether to do one in our bathroom revamp. It would have saved us space and improved the light and the vibe.

But all the ones I saw - well-installed, good hardware - just felt wiggly to me. I think it's because they only have tracks at the top, rather than the bottom. Even for an able-bodied person, it proved tricky to get the latch to line up with the bit it latches onto. (Both I and my four year old tried, and it took several times before we managed to line it up juuuust right).

And as sue36 says, you inevitably have a gap at the floor.

Also, for anyone with any kind of arthritic or OOS issue, the latch is fiddly to get hold of. Give me a doorknob any day.

Better still, give me a non-fiddly, non-wiggly pocket door! I love the concept and the space-saving-ness of it. I guess the technology is steadily improving. We can hope!

In the house my brother and I grew up in, we had two bathrooms where the shower and toilet were separated from the sink by a pocket door. It worked wonderfully. When there were fewer people requiring the bathroom, we could shut the standard door on the outside of the sink. When others might need the sink, we could close and lock the pocket door to the shower and toilet. Even with us two children (stayed in the home from ages 2-18+) who were often not careful with the door, we never had any problems. I think as long as it's a good quality track and lock, it should work fine. I'm not certain where the lock came from, it was a simple flip of a switch that pushed the locking lever down into the door frame. We did have issues with us children banging the pocket door too loudly while our parents were asleep in the next room, but even with that we never had any problems with the door.

I have a pocket door with a latch between the master bedroom and master bath. The door is 3/4" from the floor, which is the same distance as all the other doors. While we never bother to latch the door, the latch does work without difficulty. The door is 32", a slab on a Johnson 1500 Series pocket door frame.

I was planning pocket doors for both baths here in Mobile house. But after installing the critical door on the new tiny bath, I decided to do a bifold door on the other bath. Taking out the old exterior wall which is stucco, and creating a pocket into the new bumpout for the bath, was just to fiddly for my taste. So this bath now under construction is a master suite bath, with access only into the master bedroom. Voila, a bifold door. In fact, a frosted glass french bifold door.

They are constructing this bath as we speak. Thank heaven it is finally going ahead.

I love pocket doors and install them wherever I can. Of course, a pocket door only makes sense if you have a standard, 2x4 wall to work with. All three of my bedrooms and bathrooms have pocket doors, most from the original builder. I even had custom cabinets built for my master bath so I wouldn't have to mess with the original pocket door connecting bedroom and bath--thin vertical supports for the pocket door meant I had to keep a few vertical 2x4s outside the wall to support the roof beam, if that makes any sense.

True, the locks for my pocket doors aren't as sturdy as those for a regular door, but everyone who lives and and visits my house just has to trust the others to respect a closed door.

When we just expanded our master bathroom, we ended up adding a pocket door (only an archway previously). We have the latch mechanism, but really didn't want to mess up the look of the door or frame with it since we knew we would never latch it. So, we have it in case some future owner wants to add the latch.
LOVE the pocket door. Would do it again in an instant.

I vote yea on pocket doors.

Regarding resale, to me as a buyer, a pocket door would always be a huge plus, and the last thing I'd be thinking about when looking at a house would be whether it locked or not.

I also grew up with a pocket door on our 1960s house's lone bathroom, which was very tiny and right off a main area. Anyway, it worked just fine and I don't recall any gap at the bottom, and that is the kind of thing that would have bothered me re privacy.

Pocket doors are great, I'd like to have them on all my rooms.

Thanks for all your input, folks!

I agree there is a difference between using a pocket door for an interior space versus using one for a hall bathroom. If your house is an older house in an older neighborhood where the bathrooms are small and the door swings inward, then it might be preferable to keep with that style. The only disadvantage, that I see, is that when you're inside the bathroom you have to close the door to use the sink. By switching to a pocket door, are you going to gain any interior space that you were going to use to change the bathroom's floorplan?

I am not sure what you are asking, auzzy.... We are already planning to move the door opening to a different wall to better utilize the floor space in the small bathroom. if we do a regular door, the swing area will be right where one would stand to wash hands at the sink, but the door would not open against the vanity, but against the opposite wall. In using the bathroom door, one would need to step back away from the vanity (further into the room) in order to operate the door. We're thinking that the pocket door would avoid that.

In our house, locks are rarely, if ever used. And the teenager daughter spends a lot of time at the mirror in the bathroom. We often open the door to tell her to hurry up or she'll miss the bus, etc. With a swinging door we'd hit her with the door. I guess that's not a totally valid reason to choose a pocket door though. it's more that I am theorizing that it will make the bath's interior space feel bigger not to have the door swing taking up literally half the open floor space...

Here's the current layout. Notice how the door and vanity placement mean that the only really useable floor space is directly in front of the toilet, just that tiny spot!

Here's what we are planning to do to maximize the floor space. So... the question is whether a pocket door in this case would make the space more useable? (The pocket door would slide into the wall next to the vanity.)

With your new plan, I'd absolutely do a pocket door.

Thanks, coolbeans... anyone else want to vote yes or no on the pocket door in this particular layout? I'm realizing it IS going be more of a PITA to build (we are DIY) and more costly as well, so I'm still undecided. Help!

Our hall bathroom is the same layout as your new proposed layout, and the door swinging in drives me crazy. In our case, it is a bathroom that my husband and I occasionally use together, and it is impossible to open the door if someone is standing at the sink - impossible unless the person at the sink moves out of the way. Very annoying. I would LOVE to have a pocket door, and would absolutely put one in if I were building it from scratch.

Thanks, yillimuh. That's sort of what I thought..... OK, then. Unless I find that it's going to be too difficult when I gut the wall (if I find it requires structural reinforcing beyond what I expect, for instance) I will plan on a pocket door. It will preclude additional niche shelving in that wall, but that's OK. I got a BIG antique dresser to use for the vanity, with lots of drawer storage....

We did an outside pocket door, or barn door. It is called both. Since we were just doing a 'refresh' of the space and didn't want to tear down walls.

Here is the one into the hall bath:

This we added to our master bedroom/bath. There was no door here previously

This I added to the office/craft room at the top of the stairs. There were double doors here and they took up way too much room when you opened them in.

They are real easy to install and for a small house a great space saver.

Laura

I think a pocket door isn't really needed with the new layout. The only advantage I see to one is that it really is easier for someone to navigate when they use a wheelchair.

We thought about a pocket door as well, thought long and hard about it! But in the end, we decided to move the sink & flip the swing of the door so it operates similar to your situation. Yes, if someone has the door closed & is washing their hands, you can't open it. But for DH&I, we close the door if we use the toilet ... if we just go in the bathroom to wash our hands or brush our teeth the door is usually open. If one of us is using the toilet, we don't want anyone else in there :) And washing hands afterwards takes a minute, not too long to wait.

So I'd vote to keep the door as a swinging door. Save yourself the hassle of opening the wall & ordering a special door that has the panels offset (if you use a regular door, when it is closed the panels are off-center b/c the back edge of the door stays in the sliding jamb by 1" - if you aren't obsessed with symmetry it may not bug you, though).

It really all does depend on how you use the room. For us, another part of why it doesn't work is that we need room to hang towels and robes, and the robe hooks ended up behind where the door swings into the room. That in and of itself would not be so bad, but we also usually have an item or two hanging on the back of the door. All of that stuff hanging between the door & wall means that the door doesn't stay open all the time. So if you're standing at the sink with the door open, it isn't actually open all the way, and someone else entering the room has to squeeze by. Of course, this was a bathroom used by three people, so we had more stuff hanging in it than one teenage girl would (or at least, one would hope!). It really all depends on how you use it.

Have you thought about where you will have hooks for towels & things?

"But all the ones I saw - well-installed, good hardware - just felt wiggly to me. I think it's because they only have tracks at the top, rather than the bottom. "

It is very easy to cut a groove in the bottom of the door (stopped at the show edge) and put a piece of 1 in x 1 in aluminum angle into the floor of the pocket to prevent sway.

You really only need a few inches of angle (I often use just 6 inches).

You do need a door that is slightly wider than the open space between the jambs so the angle stays in the groove when the door is fully closed.

Even a small block of wood tacked to the bottom of the door on the pocket side will do the job.