The rustic barn door style is becoming increasingly popular these days because it looks unique and doesn’t rely on hinges. Barn doors slide open along a rail mechanism, creating a neat aesthetic and minimizing space use in homes with smaller footprints.
There are many different styles of barn doors available. GridVue barn doors, for instance, split the glass up along a grid pattern, creating an urban or industrial aesthetic. Glass barn door panels, by contrast, are incredibly modern looking and come with a mirrored inset that creates a space in your room.
For some, though, barn doors should look rustic. Ideally, they ought to reflect their heritage.
Wood barn doors are traditional and often come with matching handle styles. The wood finish is reminiscent of the entries you would have found in agricultural settings centuries ago. They bring a sense of coziness into the home and pair exceptionally well with modern elements and finishes, creating the perfect contrast.
The Perfect Rustic Barn Door
So what makes the perfect rustic barn door? Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn’t just mean creating functionally and aesthetically equivalent old-style barn doors. Instead, the hardware you choose should be suitable for the modern home. It should harken back to the original but incorporate current quality and finish standards. Old-style rustic barn doors were great, but there’s always room for improvement.
First, the perfect barn door needs to incorporate the highest quality materials. There should be plenty of unprocessed wood in the construction. The use of traditional materials is essential – even if there are modern elements, such as mirror inset panels.
Second, barn doors should reflect their heritage in the fixtures and fittings that they use. They should feature attractive handles and sliding rails that evoke traditional styles while providing longevity.
And finally, they should be robust. Barn doors were, after all, working doors in the past. That pedigree remains a vital consideration today. When choosing a barn door, look for quality engineered materials and fittings.
Design Your Barn Door
Wood Finish
It’s rare to step into a home these days and find a raw wood finish on a sliding barn door – especially in interiors – and that’s a shame. The use of traditional materials helps to elevate a room and relax the mind. When you install rustic barn doors, you get a sense that you’ve traveled back to a simpler time when the pressures of the modern world don’t exist.
\Wood finish barn doors are a classic and can elevate practically any room. Like other barn doors, they run along sliders and provide a clean break between one space and another. They’re ideal for those who are going for that country-style look.
Hardware Finish
The quality of hardware finish on your bathroom doors is paramount. While rustic wood sets the overall tone, handles and door mounts provide the finishing touches. When you have great hardware finishes, you complete the door and get something that matches seamlessly. It’s key to getting the perfect door. Hardware finish options include flat black, dark grey, and charcoal on wood barn doors.
Wood barn doors feature face and top mount designs. Rustic barn doors are also compatible with concealed header hardware – including hidden wheel tracks – providing a cleaner aesthetic.
Hardware Styles
Multiple hardware styles are available. Rustic barn doors come with both top-mount and face-mount. The rustic top mouth has a black roller attached to a bare, monotone mount fitted to the door’s top. The rustic face mouth is minimalist and all black. There is also a rustic bent top mount and rustic bent face mount available, alongside a concealed header. Ultimately, which hardware style you choose depends on the kind of look you want in your home.
Ideally, you want all hardware to be crafted from stainless steel. This material makes fittings resistant to tarnishing, allowing you to place hardware near rooms that generate a lot of humidity, such as the bathroom.
Handle Styles
Rustic barn doors come in a range of handle styles, designed to add the finishing touches. For wood barn doors, you have several options.
The classic is the bent handle. This piece is simply a piece of shaped, blackened metal that provides you with something to grasp when sliding the door open or shut.
Another option is the inset handle. This design aims to eliminate any protrusions from the door itself with the handle sitting inside the wood.
The ladder pull handle provides yet another handle style – perfect for people who have contemporary homes and want to add modern elements to their barn doors.
Incorporate Decorative Glass Into Your Barn Door Designs
Finally, some interior sliding barn doors use decorative glass and mirrors in their construction to add extra beauty and decorative effects. Antique mirrors are available in bright gold, white clouds, blue-grey, bright white, gold bronze, purple, and copper swirl. Patterns range from the subdued and calm to the bright and bold, providing additional contrast and helping to turn your sliding doors into a bona fide centerpiece interior feature.
Other decorative glass options for barn doors would include back painted glass to add a focal point and pop of color for your environment.
You can opt for laminated glass also. Laminated organic interlayers such as grass, wood, and color films along with custom printed interlayers that could be images, branding, or patterns.
Printed glass offers a wealth of options allowing you to print full color HD images direct to glass.
Lastly, one of the oldest and still most popular options for barn door glass panels would be etched glass. Etched and frosted glass panels inset in barn door panels offers a classic look with a ton of options in terms of transparency, privacy, and decorative freedom. Etch any pattern from custom designs to gradients allowing you to match the rest of your room and design style and needs.
