Folding Doors, Opening Walls

The disappearing wall, made possible by an ever-increasing number of folding-door products on the market, accomplishes for residential architects what until recently had been seen mostly in restaurants and hotels. The folding door products available today for residential applications allow 30, 40, 50 ft. or more of wall to be opened up, unobstructed, to erase the line between indoors and out.

The most common residential applications for these folding doors are in great rooms, family rooms and kitchens, where they open a wall to outdoor living areas. Depending on the model and the level of engineering applied, unobstructed openings of 10 ft. to a hundred feet can be created.

“Typically these doors open to a large covered patio, and when people open them up, the family room and outdoor patio become one large space. We’ve also seen smaller three-door configurations used in kitchens rather than sliders,” says Greg LeFevre, vice president, sales and marketing, Architectural Traditions. “I’ve also seen curved units where the track itself is radiused. The other thing I’m seeing is units where two-door systems on adjacent walls meet at a 90-degree corner, so they actually open up the entire corner of a room.”

Architects are helping drive demand more than builders. “I see this product being specified across the design spectrum — all house styles,” LeFevre says. “From our perspective, demand for this product seems to be architecturally driven. It’s associated more with a client’s lifestyle, where they really want to create an indoor/outdoor space and be closer to nature.”

Ebrahim Nana, president of NanaWall Systems, likens the effect of a Nana folding wall to that of putting the top down on a convertible. “You can feel that exhilaration, feel the breeze blowing through your hair. It’s about the wow factor.

“Our business, our brand, delivers shelter, transformation and exhilaration. Shelter because it’s weather-tight, secure, comfortable, and creates a sheltered space, and with our engineering we transform a space into exhilaration,” he says.

Nana points out the architectural importance of the clean lines created by a folding door, compared to sliding doors which have panels that offset from each other. “Many of our architect clients use folding doors because when they’re closed, the panels are all on the same plane, creating a clean look, and clean lines are important to architects,” Nana says.

Some interesting applications have surprised manufacturers. The use of these doors as room dividers surprised Shane Meisel, marketing manager, premium and custom door division, Jeld-Wen. “We didn’t anticipate that. Also, the radius applications where the wall created by these doors is round rather than flat are different.

“This door can do many things architecturally. It presents the functionality of patio doors, and also increases the amount of light coming into a room, as well as the amount of perceived space. It opens up the home,” Meisel says.

Jon Sawatzky, architectural consultant, Loewen Windows and Doors, has seen two interesting applications of its folding door systems. One architect included the doors behind a bar so when opened, the owners could use the bar while outside, he says. “The second application was a shortened window system. They ordered shorter door panels, about the height of your average window, to create a folding window system rather than a folding door system,” Sawatzky remembers.