How many sliding doors for my opening — and how much really opens

The number of doors is not a matter of taste but of the width of the opening. That width decides both how many doors you get and how much of the opening you can actually see once you slide them — and the second one is what you live with daily, while nobody asks about it before ordering. The calculator on the wardrobe page works out both as you type; this is what it works from.

How many doors for which width

The figures below are for Europrofil EP 10, handle EP10-79, an opening 2500 mm high — the most common system here.

• —1200 mm → 2 doors of 620 mm
• —1800 mm → 2 doors of 920 mm
• —2400 mm → 3 doors of 826 mm
• —3000 mm → 4 doors of 770 mm
• —3600 mm → 4 doors of 920 mm
• —4200 mm → 5 doors of 872 mm

The target width is around 900 mm: wider doors move hard and twist more easily, narrower ones look like a measuring mistake and lose too much of the opening to overlaps. Below 400 mm a door is hard to even grip.

What nobody tells you: how much actually opens

Sliding doors do not open — they move sideways. The door you push has to end up behind another door, so the open part is always one door wide, or two, never the whole opening.

• —2 doors → half the opening
• —3 doors on two tracks → a third
• —4 doors on two tracks → half
• —5 doors on three tracks → two fifths

So three doors are not "more access than two" — they are less. On an 1800 mm opening two doors of 920 give you 920 mm of clear space; three doors of 626 give 626 mm, and cost a third handle, a third pair of rollers and a third panel.

When it pays to set the number yourself

The automatic suggestion looks only at width. Three reasons to override it:

• —A mirror. A 920 mm door with a board panel weighs about 19 kg; the same door with a 4 mm safety-backed mirror, about 26. More, narrower doors are easier on the gear and on the fitter.
• —What is inside. A wide drawer or a pull-out shelf has to come out through the open part.
• —Looks. Doors under 600 mm on a wide wall read as a fence; doors over 1000 mm look calm but take two hands to move.

Common questions

Can I have a single sliding door?

No. A sliding door needs somewhere to go, and that is always past another door or past the wall beside the opening. For an alcove under 900 mm sliding doors take more than they give — that is where hinged doors belong.

Does the number of doors change the price?

It does, in three places: one handle profile per door, one pair of rollers per door, and one more panel. The track stays the same. That is why two wider doors almost always cost less than three narrow ones on the same opening.

What if my opening is not square?

Doors are made to the smallest width you measured, and the difference is covered by a filler. The measuring guide says where to measure and how much diagonal difference a filler can still absorb.