Sugatsune Sliding Door
Sliding doors are an excellent way of saving space, and they bring style to contemporary interiors. They can be used to give security and privacy like swing doors or to open up a space as room dividers. In Japan, the spiritual home of the sliding door, there are a many, many variations upon the theme.
The simplest is the single sliding door, a mechanism such as the Sugatsune FD-30. It can be fitted across an opening and needs only the width of the door to one or the other side. It operates smoothly and like most Sugatsune sliding doors comes with optional one or two way soft closing for a hushed performance. No track is required on the floor which helps with the sense of space and the low profile mechanism above is either recessed or discreetly side mounted, sometimes under a small pelmet.
For larger doors with similar functionality the FD-50 and FD-80 should be considered. All can be configured for double doors opening to either side.
Pocket doors can use the same mechanism as a sliding door but are built in to the architecture, disappearing into a slot when open. The reliability of Sugatsune hardware is important here as maintenance on a pocket door can be significantly less welcome.
The LM-80 mechanism has a self-closing feature which locks open and closed with a positive catch. It uses a purpose built gravity system. (Don’t accept a standard sliding door installed on the slant for this function, it will lead to early failure.) The LM-80 even has an adjustable closing speed. There are many reasons why you might want a door to self close but this kind of mechanism is being increasingly used in the tobacconist section of supermarkets to hide the evil weed.
For that minimalist look a flush closing sliding door such as the MFU-1000 is the last word in style. It has a novel action so that at the end of its slide it moves in to create a flush surface with the wall it is installed behind. This unit is supplied in kit form so you don’t have to sit down with a slide rule to work out what you need.
Multiple sliding doors can be used as room dividers and in the case of a multiple-synchronised system can have two, three or more doors move to one side in unison. Folding-sliding doors have a larger footprint but need no space to the side to slide into. They work well on built in wardrobes or can be used as room dividers when a whole wall can fold like a concertina and be moved to one side. The folding sliding door can even be combined with a pocket door in a system such as the ALT-F where doors are first folded to the side and then pushed back into a pocket.
Sugatsune has a huge range of sliding door and lateral motions, extended by the Hawa range which it distributes in the UK. This includes smaller doors for cabinets up to Hawa’s behemoths with sliding doors up to 500kgs.
If you’ve got an installation you’re thinking about why not give Sugatsune a call and we’ll talk through the best mechanisms for your specific application.
