A sliding barn door is mounted on the face of a wall so the area where it slides when opened must be keep free of obstacles and that makes it somewhat impractical. Why not use a pocket door?

If this is a door that you use frequently, and a pantry door IS, then skip the faddistic popular choices in favor of a plain old fashioned swing open door. If you want to be ahead of the curve, choose a double swing door like they put on restaurants. As long as the space in front won't smack someone when you exit that is. Otherwise, a plain ordinary door is always going to be the best choice for a pantry. Pocket doors get left open. Barn doors do too. And they are both more awkward to use.

We have a couple of barn doors.

I like them because they can be space savers, you don't have to keep furniture clear of a swinging door.

It's true that they slide along a wall and that wall has to be free of objects in that path. But we have a dresser along a wall with a barn door and it just sits out about 2 inches from the wall and the barn door slides behind it. Doesn't look odd at all and works really well. You just have to decide what works for you.

Not applicable to your situation, but one thing about barn doors is that while the provide visual privacy, there isn't much in the way of sound privacy with them. There are gaps and the sound will flow right around them.

It's a cool look - but like any, works in particular situation and not others.

We have barn doors at our entrance, into a vestibule (since they really can't be weather stripped).

We also have a barndoor at the entrance to my bathroom. It is, if you will, a French barn door (eg 4 panes of glass). Probably sounds like the most useless door in the world, but I wanted to be able to see into my bathroom from my bed, as I have a really pretty free standing tub on a wide plank wood floor surrounded by windows.

Anyway, I love our barn doors. But we have a sort of a rambling farmhouse look (partly dating to 1904) on 9 acres in CT, so a barn door isn't ludicrous. They are very very trendy though, and so that is a risk. Less so, in our setting, but I think it is a risk for us and anyone else.

Functionallly, well you lose the space the doors needs to slide over. That does not happen with a pocket. I will also say, that with a pocket or a barn, assume 90% of the time the door will be left open by kids.

We will have barn doors covering a tv over the fireplace(I know not popular on here) and one for the master bath. We also live on a 16 acre farm. If it doesn't work out we will just change it out, going to get what we like now.

Our "barn doors", FWIW

{{gwi:1400083}}

mtnrdredux, I am shocked. SHOCKED. You actually have a door with color on your house. :^P I really like that green. Very outdoorsy but soothing. Is that the "public" entrance to the home? Family entrance? How many times a day does the barn door get used? It's one of the few that I've seen that look like they are left mostly closed rather than mostly open.

redux - tell me how the exterior barn door works w/r/t weatherproofing

Komeht, it does not. As far as I know, it cannot. The barn doors open into a vestibule where we have exterior french doors (see below){{gwi:1400084}}

LWO,
Yes, well, most people do go a little wild with front door colors. This is us, wild. It is called Hampshire Grey. We used it here, on our cellar door, on a well, on our itty bitty stonehouse trim, and our wall of DR windows (where we have a slate floor and it is sort of garden room like). It is our "go to" color when we want to be WILD.

It is our front door. The family would tend not to use this door, we would park in the service gate area and go in near the kitchen. We have a second gate for guests, where there is a lot more parking. Unfortunately when people park they tend not to know where the front door is, even though we even had signs made. That's okay because very often they are coming to parties out back at the pond, or in the pool structure, anyway. But when so many people cannot find your front door, youve done something wrong ...

Posted by Andi_K (My Page) on Mon, Jan 28, 13 at 15:25
We have a barn door on a little pocket office between the family room and kithen. I love it! But, we designed it to really be open most of the time - more for decoration. It's a tad over 8ft tall and 36" wide, so it's very heavy. It slides easily, but I wouldn't want to open/close it multiple times a day.

Luv your door Andi_K!

Been so busy with our build that I haven't gotten off my butt & call your door guy!

I absolutely love our barn door -- we consider it both functional and an interesting additional texture and color. The opening in question is between our great room and kids' den/playroom/etc. We thought standard doors on that wall would look awkward, and I find pocket doors kind of boring. Most of the time the door will be open, but the kids can close it whenever they want more privacy, to watch TV, etc.

Here's a (blurry cell phone) photo I took this morning. Please ignore the mess -- we just finished moving in on Tuesday!

mtnrdredux - love your barn doors. I am usually on the Kitchen or decorating forum but decided to lurk here today. Just wanted to say - wow! that's all.

Andi K
I love your barn door! I'm considering doing almost the same thing of putting one between our kitchen and mini-office. Where do you get that door?

Thanks renton123!

The door was actually made by our trim carpenter. I was originally looking at purchasing an old one, but could never find the right size I needed. Then, I was going to order one at barndoorshardware.com. But, they still looked "new" and I wanted it to be old :) So, my builder picked up some antique poplar boards, and the trim carpenter put it all together!

Oh, hey, RTWilliams, thank you.

I like all of them here, I am a sucker for this look.

Where did your hardware come from? Everywhere I have looked online are very expensive.

Did you do the sliding door!?? Do you have pics? Would love to see it if you did.

Jen

No we didn't end up going with the barn door for our pantry. When we started painting and putting up our crown molding and had our wood floors stained, we just didn't think the rustic barn door would be the right look. We chose all our interior doors with the 5 horizontal raised panels, painted white. For our pantry door in particular, we chose to have the door hinge swing. I thought that would be handy, for putting up armloads of groceries, etc. are you thinking of putting in a barn door?

Yes we will be putting in a barn door on the pantry. Not sure if it will be a traditional barn style or a hybridized version with chalkboard section for grocery lists and kids drawing area. It's in an area of the kitchen that passes to the laundry area, so a sliding door will work best.

Jen

We're using an antique door for our powder room. It will be in the foyer, so I am going to build recessed areas in the wall for pictures or artwork. That way, the door can move without knocking things off of the wall. If we don't like the look, I can always fill it in.

I bought antique door rollers for ours. They are much smaller than the usual barn hardware; it's been suggested that they may have come off of a rail car.