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Health & Fitness

Aging in Place: Accessible Alternative Doors

Accessible alternative doors have limited use in aging in place remodeling, but they are usable.

Accessible alternative doors have limited use in aging in place remodeling, but they are usable. Alternatives to the traditional hinge door include: Bi-fold door, quad-fold door, double swing door, by-pass doors and pocket doors.

Bi-fold and quad-fold doors are almost never used in aging in place because they reduce the useable doorway width which impedes accessibility. About the only place they have use is as a closet door where a traditional swing door will hinder mobility when open.

Double swing doors (French doors) are two doors in the same opening where each door is hinged on opposite jambs. Generally double swing doors are used in wide openings of four feet or wider. They are a good alternative when you need privacy between rooms and the opening is four feet or wider. The wide opening can make it very easy to access the closet.

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Bypass doors are an option for closets but not for interior doorways. Bypass doors provide 1/2 of the access that double swing doors provide. However, bypass doors do not take up any floor space for swinging, so they are a good alternative in a tight space where a hinged door or double door would take swing space. 

Pocket doors are doors that slide into a “pocket” in a wall. However, in the context of aging in place, I will caution against the use of pocket doors because not only are they challenging and possibly expensive, the little latch to open and close a pocket door is recessed into the edge of the door. As people age, this latch would likely become more difficult to see and use because of loss of dexterity.

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Learn more about accessible alternative doors on Northwood Construction’s blog. For more information on this and other aging-in-place home improvements in Northern Virginia, please visit the Northwood Construction website.  

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