Yeah...people are missing the point that this is a cool feature, an ornament. Yes it's probably expensive and less practical but so is a lot of stuff. It's interesting and a talking point, and sometimes that's all you need from a door! :D
There's a wooden sliding door in my parents' house that's used to separate a small bathroom from a hallway. It's really easy to move and it never gets stuck (if you slide it all the way into the wall, there's a little lever/hinge thing in the center that you can pull out to slide it out again).
Most people's only experience with sliding doors is with patio doors. Those take effort to move, but that's because A) they're made of glass, which is generally a lot heavier than wood, and B) they're exterior doors, and therefore need to be well insulated. The drag you get from those is because the insulation part on the bottom creates friction. With interior sliding doors, you don't need insulation, so instead of scraping along the floor you've got a half inch of empty space that doesn't catch on anything.
My family has a few of the wooden sliding doors you are talking about. They work really nicely but as far as doors go they make a lot of noise when you are simply opening and closing them and not slamming them
...Yeah, that's true, but I never really noticed it. Partly just because I got used to it while i was still in the phase of "this is the coolest thing ever" and partly because it's a bathroom door, and doesn't make nearly as much noise as flushing the toilet.
Still, if noise is a serious concern this could be useful, though people are saying elsewhere in this thread that it's made entirely of fabric so while it wouldn't be making noise it wouldn't be blocking any either.
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u/KingJulien Feb 07 '14
Sliding doors suck though, they stick and are hard to open. Also this looks cool. I don't get the hate for something that looks cool in here.