Selection of Hardware for Sliding Wardrobe Shutters

So why are there so many solutions & options being innovated & offered for wardrobe & partition door fittings in the last few years? Over a period of time, the storage requirement of an average home has gone up by almost 100%, but the floor space of new homes has reduced significantly.

Wardrobes with sliding doors are one such invention that has revolutionized the way we store items and have become a rage these days owing to their space saving benefits among others.  Sliding wardrobes, just like traditional wardrobes can store just about anything from clothes, jewellery, shoes to bags.

The most obvious reason for using Sliding Door Hardware is to save space that a conventional wardrobe takes up when its doors open in the front.  But there can be other reasons too for choosing a sliding wardrobe. For one, they give your room a very classy and sophisticated appearance.

Sliding wardrobe doors can be made from a wide variety of materials like frosted glass, mirrors, wood, metal and veneer.

But before you rush to makes these sliding wardrobes, do check up on the following points to ensure ease of handling and longevity of your new wardrobe. There are mainly 3 types of hardware systems that these doors operate upon.

1. Top running sliding door fitting
2. Bottom running sliding door
3. Sliding Folding Door Mechanisms

For operating large and heavy doors, it is advisable to use this particular soft-close mechanism.It only takes a gentle push to open or close the doors, which are propelled by the electromagnetic system. These are more expensive than manual ones.

1.Top running sliding door fitting

This mechanism allows the doors to slide freely without any weight falling upon the doors as they are suspended from the top. While this top running hardware (Top line slider) is more expensive than a bottom running one (bottom line slider), it will ensure that there is a very small chance of the doors getting bent as the entire weight of the door doesn’t fall on the bottom frame and wheels.

2.Bottom running sliding door fitting

Cheaper than the top running system, this mechanism is slightly underrated due to the wheels getting stuck in the channels. Bottom running wheels over time can get sluggish due to accumulated dirt in the wheel channels. However, if you manage to get the channels cleaned regularly and have used a good quality door that won’t bend even with the entire weight of the door falling on it, you may have a winner in this mechanism.

3.Sliding folding collapsible door fitting

Although these doors do open out in the front, the space taken up by them is less than half of a conventional wardrobe door. The doors fold in half its size and run only on sliders attached to the top of the main frame.

Thus the doors never stray from the wardrobe mainframe and are always hugging the wardrobe.

That said, wardrobe designs vary in size, appearance and make. There a lot of things you can get customized to suit your needs.