A single very rustic looking barn door of reused pale wood planks crossed diagonaly by another plant is suspended from black rail and rests on black metal wheels in a very industrial looking home. The floors are poured grey concrete; the walls appear to be concrete as well. There are two plans on the floor, but otherwise the only things in the room are three bare-bulb pendant lights, a black and grey artwork in an industrial style framed and hanging next to the barn door, a small table with some books, and more books and rocks on the floor in the room beyond the door. There is a multipaned industrial-looking window at the back of the room seen through the door.

Q&A Style, Decor & Design

Barn Doors—Yes or No?

January 21, 2023February 13, 2023 by Laura Grey No Comments

Q: I like rustic design elements like basketry and wrought iron, neutral pottery, and raw wood. I don’t want a lot of small stuff filling up my house, though. My place is a friendly house in the country. It should look put together over time, with things made and collected by hand. I don’t want it to feel “decorated”—just lived in and comfortable. Barn doors would pack a big punch and bring the rural farmhouse feel I like. I’ve been seeing a lot of these around for a few years. Are they practical? And are they likely to go out of style anytime soon?

A grey-beige room with painted beadboard has dark wood floors and dark planks across the ceiling. White glass-paned doors hang from a room-wide black rail. Two shapely mirrors with aqua-green curvy frames hang on the right wall. A rustic farm table is at right, flanked by two camelbacked brown dining chairs and one mismatched high-backed tufted white dining chair. In the room beyond is a chandelier, a blue rug and a clear acrylic table. — A pair of white barn doors with glass panes provides a modern take on traditional French doors—the dark rail and dark wood floor and ceiling brings a grounded, modern touch that keeps the room from looking too formal | Adobe Stock

A: Barn doors make a big statement. These single or double oversized doors hang over a doorway from a track attached to a wall. When made of unpainted wood and against hung against light walls, they look rustic and homey. Hung from black or silver chrome hardware and tracks, black or distressed wooden doors give an industrial vibe. This fits perfectly in an industrial-style loft space, like a former factory or warehouse setting. A pair finished in glossy white, and hung with shiny chrome-plated hardware, can be positively elegant. When you add windows to barn doors, they become a modern take on French doors.

Stylish as they are, they do have drawbacks. These include their expense, their size, and the challenges of hanging or refinishing them. They also provide limited privacy. In some situations they can save you space. In others, they take up much more space than a standard hinged door or a pocket door. So, let’s go over their pros and cons. We’ll address whether they’re a fad, or here to stay. Then you can think about where barn doors might work (or not work) in your home.

Benefits of Barn Doors

Rustic barn doors have a relaxed, homey quality

An all-white bedroom with a chandelier and white furniture on a white carpet has a grey-painted wooden barn door separating it from a large bathroom beyond. Even the framed art is all white. There's one plant in the room. — An airy, elegant space can benefit from the contrast that large rustic but pale element like a barn door painted in a soft grey or a pastel color brings. French decorators have long known that a slightly rough or distressed element brings a casual timeworn quality that brings life and ease to an otherwise formal room. It shows that the people who live there care about quality and beauty, but don’t want to get too fussy or precious about it. | Adobe Stock

Hanging interior barn doors usually have rustic finishes. These might be unfinished or distressed wood, or rough wood whitewashed or painted with a pale color. Maybe they have smooth, shiny, or handmade-looking hardware. These characteristics give them a handcrafted, worn feel. They make a big visual statement without looking glossy or fussy. People who want a home to look comfortably casual and lived in often find that this look gives a pleasing country feel. Barn doors can fit into many different settings, including coastal casual, modern farmhouse, or minimalist style homes.

Highly finished doors bring urban polish

More polished versions of barn doors give off a sleek, urban feel. These include doors made of smooth, oiled dark woods, or those finished with lacquer-shiny white paint. They look at home in a minimalist urban industrial loft, an all-white penthouse, or in a minimalist home.

Consider a whitewashed, pale grey, or pastel-painted door in an upscale French country, coastal, or contemporary-style room. It will bring a cozy element to a more formal room that soften the space, and makes it feel welcoming.

For more drama, double up barn doors. Pull each one off to one side to create an especially dramatic and balanced entryway.

Oversized doors can be both grand & unfussy

A pair of farmhouse-style barn doors is hung across a wide doorway. The floor is wood and the walls are white. Beyond the doors is an empty room, also white. There is a window in the back wall with no window treatments around it. — Placing a pair of tall, dark brown barn doors in a pale, minimalist space creates an interesting study in contrasts, but it can look severe. Adding color, art, soft furnishings, warm lighting, and living plants will bring this static space to life | Adobe Stock

Barn doors are extra tall, and their hardware hangs above them, so they draw the eye up. In a tall space, such as a loft or a room with cathedral ceilings, it helps to use tall elements. Large barn doors, clerestory windows, and extra-tall fireplaces invite people to look skyward. This emphasizes the height of a room. If you have a large room, do you want elements that fit its grand dimensions? Barn doors can act like wall art, filling space and drawing attention with their bold size, texture, and geometry.

In some situations, they save space

You might you have a small room off a narrow hallway or a main living space, such as a laundry area or a hall closet. A normal hinged door can swing out into the hallway and block it. If you have a pantry just off your kitchen, a swinging door can block cabinets or appliance access. You might consider a pocket door that slides open and hides inside the wall when not in use. However, sometimes the framing of the wall around the door won’t allow you such a door. In these cases, a barn door can add style, hide everyday items from sight, and allow freer movement through your home.

Barn Doors Also Provide Challenges

They take up a lot of room

Barn doors hang from a track, so their hardware must be hung above the top of the door. You can’t hang the track right next to the ceiling because doors must be lifted into place above the track. They’re also so heavy that you’ll probably need to hang them from a header over the doorway. Such doors need high-ceilinged rooms to work practically and not look cramped.

These doors are also wider than a standard door. They must be wide enough to cover the doorway completely and extend beyond it several inches on each side. When open, they take up more than twice the door’s width to the side of the doorway. You’ll need an open space next to the doorway that’s at least six feet wide. That takes up a lot of unusable space on a wall.

They don’t block sounds or smells very well

A detail of a pair of weathered grey wood barn doors. The slats in these doors are in a chevron or zigzag pattern. — *Weathered barn doors with chevron patterned slats bring visual energy to a room | Elisabeth Lee for Unsplash*

Barn doors hang from hardware and tracks. These need to hang far enough away from the opening so the door won’t scrape the wall. This means there may be an inch or more of uncovered space between the sides and top of the door and the wall around it. The door must extend beyond the edges of the doorway at least several inches for privacy and to hide light. But barn doors don’t fit into a doorframe.This means gaps around the door let sounds and smells carry between rooms, even when the door is closed.

Be wary of using a barn door over the doorway to a bathroom. What you do in the bathroom will be easy for those beyond the door to hear. If you’re a light sleeper, or share your home with children or other housemates, I wouldn’t recommend using a barn door on your bedroom. Do you have a home office where you need privacy while you work? A hinged door that shuts fully will do a better job of keeping your conversations confidential.

They can be noisy to open & close

Barn doors are very heavy, often 200 pounds or so. They hang on metal tracks and usually move on metal wheels. When you move a heavy barn door, it usually rumbles or squeaks more than a pocket door. As they’re moved, barn doors may bump walls slightly. If you need a quiet environment, no door is as quiet as a standard door hung on well-oiled hinges.

You can’t place things on the wall behind one

Barn doors are wide and they hang close to the wall. They need to slide all the way to the side of the door to allow access. As a result, you can’t place anything on the wall that the door will cover. This doesn’t just mean includes obvious things like chairs or bookcases or artworks. It also means you can’t put a barn door in front of light switches, outlets, window frames, vents, or other doors.

Barn doors may save space in a hallway. However, in a bedroom, office, or living room, they eat up significant wall space. That also means you can’t put storage cabinets or an entertainment center against the wall where the barn door will go. However, many furnishings can be moved a bit further out into the room without looking odd. Here are a few workarounds:

Put a TV or computer on a cart, console table, or small desk placed far enough from the wall that the barn door will slide behind it
Put an electric or upright piano or electric guitar stand far enough out into the room that the door fits behind it
Place your sofa and chairs away from the walls toward the center of the room. Then you can walk around and behind them—just leave a buffer of space near barn doors

Barn doors are harder to refinish or replace

Two bright blue barn doors hang from a black rail against a mustard colored brick wall. The doors are opened and beyond them is a dark sectional sofa topped with an array of brightly colored pillows in geometric patterns. — Doors in bold colors feel energetic and joyful. However, many people tire of bright colors quickly and feel they limit decoration options. They’re also seen as distractions when a house is on the market. Paint is inexpensive, but many buyers have trouble imagining themselves in a house unless it’s as neutral and impersonal as possible | Adobe Stock

Barn doors have become particularly popular over the past decade. They show up often on design makeover shows because they provide a lot of impact for something that can be installed in a day. People also equate them with an elevated, aspirational type of country decor. Like shiplap interior siding, they provide a designer-style touch that doesn’t feel too polished or overdone.

However, modern farmhouse style has been a dominant style for many years. Its popularity has begun to wane. Barn doors and shiplap are two of the most popular modern farmhouse elements, so they’re also losing steam. Style sites, shows, and model homes have overused rustic barn doors, so designers who still use them are moving toward less rustic versions. Not surprisingly, shiplap siding, another modern farmhouse staple, is also losing ground to other wall treatments. It’s been overexposed, and it limits what you can hang on a wall. What’s more, those horizontal ridges collect lots of dust, so shiplap’s a bad choice for people with dust allergies.

Will Barn Doors Look Dated in Five or Ten Years?

Modern farmhouse style’s popularity is starting to decline

Barn doors, shiplap, and other casual farmhouse style elements have been popular for a long time. That means they’re widespread and easy to find. When there are lots of examples at many price points, these elements become more affordable and common. However, after a long period of simple, rectilinear, neutral design, there’s always a move toward a contrasting style. Interior designers expect to see more color, pattern, softness, detail, and curviness to become popular in home interior design and decor elements over the next few years.

Neutral design elements are easier to update

Happily, you can layer all of those softer and more colorful elements into a neutral minimalist space. It’s easy to freshen up a space that relies heavily on neutral colors and hasn’t much applied decoration. You can even do it without replacing the big and expensive foundational elements. It’s harder to go in the opposite direction and move from a bold, colorful, maximalist aesthetic to a neutral, natural, or rough-hewn style. After all, it’s easier to add than to subtract. (That said, if you’re a bold, colorful maximalist, live it up! You can always pare back and paint over colors with neutrals later when you need to move out, right?)

If you love it, who cares what interior designers think?

Does it matter if the rustic barn door fad is fading? Not if you love it! Barn doors will be around for years to come. If you plan to sell your property soon, many buyers are likely to see barn doors as an attractive modern amenity. They shouldn’t make your home seem less appealing to the average buyer over the next few years.

The most rustic-looking examples are looking a bit dated, but not ridiculously so. Their neutrality means they’re less likely to look seriously out of fashion in five or ten years. This is not the equivalent of 1972’s olive green fridges and shag rugs, which already looked ridiculous by 1982. If you tire of your barn door, you can stain it, paint it, or swap it out later. Just remember that barn doors are quite big and heavy. You’ll need help taking them down if you want to refinish or replace them. Changing them out could be costly if and when you tire of them.

At top:

A rustic style barn door with black wheels and hanging rail looks right at home in an industrial warehouse or loft conversion, or in a minimalist home | Adobe Stock Image

Laura Grey, Editor and Publisher

January 21, 2023

When Danish Modern Style Ruled

January 21, 2023