Your glorious room is ready for occupancy, yet you come with a baggage of clothes and garments. You should have a closet prepared for that.
Now, you’ll have to deal with the problem of closing that closet. Getting your closet door dimensions may prove to be relatively trickier than expected. You might need to consider the style of door that you want for your wardrobe.
Getting the Dimensions
Before getting into the actual doors themselves, you need to measure the opening of your closet. This will determine the dimensions of your closet door. If you have measurements that aren’t standard, you will need to provide those numbers and ask for a custom-sized door.
Irrelevant on the type of door you choose, you need to measure your widths properly since this will be the one that mostly varies. A good way to measure the width of your frame is to measure the top and the bottom.
As for the height of the door, you will need to measure at three points: left, right, and center. The center measurement is not necessary if your left and right side measurements are relatively the same, but is required if they have a significant difference.
If you want to use a bifold closet door, you need to take extra measurements on the diagonals. First, measure from your top right corner to the bottom left corner. Next, measure from the top left to the bottom right. If these measurements differ by around half an inch, you will need to fix the opening of the door frame, or else your bifold door would not work properly.
Dimensions of Different Closets
1. Swinging Closet Door
The swinging closet door is much like any other door that you and I know of. It swings outward and is held by hinges on one side. Many may find this to be their first option; familiarity rarely fails us.
Since this is also a standard type of door, you’ll find a large variety of these doors at any place. They also allow maximum access to your closet since they will open wide to the entire thing. They’re the simplest kind of doors and if you have no other considerations, they will mostly suffice.
However, they do have their own cons. In compact rooms or rooms where space is a luxury, these doors become a liability since swinging them open requires a large space in front of the closet itself. You might not be able to fully open your closet, making the entire room look too tight.
Dimensions
A standard interior door usually has a minimum width of 24 inches and a minimum height of 80 inches. They also have another standard door height of 96 inches, and other standard door widths of 30 or 32 inches. However, in the case of many closets, you might end up getting a customized width to fit the size of your closet.
They come in a standard 1 ⅜ inch thickness, as mandated by the IRC building codes, which is the same as a standard exterior door.
Remember that swinging doors need to swing outward to fully open, so you need to make sure that you have at least an equal measurement of the front clearance of your closet as your door width.
2. Bypass Closet Door
The bypass closet door solves the problem compact rooms have with swinging doors. By simply running the doors on a track and having them slide in front of each other, the bypass doors consume virtually no space by themselves. You might be more familiar with calling them sliding closet doors.
They are also pretty easy to set up, to the point that you can probably do it yourself. They’re amazing, if not perfect, for compact rooms with large closets that need two or more doorframes, but do not have the floor space for two swinging ones.
Additionally, you can have more than just two panels, depending on the width of your closet, and you still don’t need to worry about frontal clearance.
However, they do have one major glaring issue: they cannot open fully to the entire closet. Since they slide in front of each other, one side of the closet will always remain hidden. You have to move both panels or doorframes in order to get to the other side.
Additionally, you have to be mindful of their tracks, as getting some small bits of material stuck there will make your door harder to move around. Luckily, these doors are easy to remove and put back, but that’s still an inconvenience as another item to maintain.
Dimensions
Bypass closet doors have similar dimensions to the swinging closet doors. Each panel usually has 80 inches of height, and five sizes for width: in inches, 24, 28, 30, 32, and 36. However, since these doors don’t use the same locks as the standard ones, they are usually thinner, around 1 ¼ in thickness.
As with any other door, you can also customize the sizes of your door. You also need to know how many panels you’ll need for your closet. As a guideline, if your closet is around 108-144 inches wide, you will need three panels. Wider than 144 inches, you will need four panels. For less than 108 inches, you will need two panels.
Don’t forget to take into consideration the fact that a small part of the panels will overlap with each other. There’s no standard measurement for this overlap, but you need to make sure that the doors do overlap or you’ll be left with gaps.
3. Bi-fold Closet Doors
If you are adamant about using a swinging door but you want a bit more clearance (and the bypass closet door just doesn’t cut it for you), then you might be delighted to know about the bi-fold closet doors. They swing outward, but they also fold in the middle, neatly ending up like an accordion at the side.
They are the go-to for people with a tight space around their closet yet want the wide opening that a sliding door cannot provide. These are also mostly used with reach-in closets.
However, bifold closet doors also run on tracks, similar to bypass doors. In fact, they’re more prone to falling off their tracks due to how they’re designed. If you frequently open and close your closet, a bifold door may not be the best for you.
On another note, these can be quite dangerous if you have children around. Kids may poke their fingers in between the panels of the doors and get them pinched while playing with the door.
Dimensions
Bi-fold doors come in similar standard dimensions as the other doors. They can come in an 80-inch or 96-inch height variety, and their fully closed widths can come anywhere from 70 to 96 inches.
The amount of customization you can have with bifold closet doors is unlike the others. You can choose the number of leaves or panels you can have. You can have two doors, each with two leaves, or one door with three leaves. The width of these leaves will vary depending on the configuration you chose.
Similar to bypass doors, bifold closet doors are thinner than most doors. They usually come in the same 1 ¼ inch thickness, although you can change that, especially if you have to consider the locks you are going to use.
4. Pocket Doors and Barn Doors
Closet pocket doors and closet barn doors are variations of bypass or sliding doors. Pocket doors slide into a pocket on the adjacent wall, instead of in front of another panel. Barn doors, on the other hand, slide directly in front of a wall.
Pocket doors are ideal for closets that are only good for one door, such as a reach-in closet. If your closet does not have the clearance for a swinging door or a bifold door, the pocket door may be the perfect door for you.
Pocket doors consume the least amount of (usable) space compared to the other doors. However, they exchange this for inflexibility. The pocket that the door slides into must be built into the adjacent wall. If you are renovating your closet, this may not be an option for you.
On the other hand, barn doors are largely an aesthetic choice, as their requirements can be quite impractical. Since they slide in front of a wall, you have to make sure that the wall the door slides into does not have any important stuff on it, such as outlets and wall hangings.
However, they have been trendy for the past few years, and if you love the look, they aren’t bad as closet doors. They’re great conversation starters, too, for people who love to entertain.
Dimensions
Pocket doors and barn doors are effectively the same as bypass doors, simply configured in a different way. Hence, they come in the same dimensions: 80 inches in height, 24-36 inches in width, and 1 ¼ inches in thickness.
Similar to all doors, you can also customize these dimensions to your specific needs.
Conclusion
Understanding closet door dimensions requires that you also understand what types of closet doors are available to you. Although these doors are usually customizable, it can help to know the standard sizes so if you are still making your closet, you can ask to make the opening into the standard size.