What Type of Barn Door Hardware Do I Need?

The type of barn door hardware you will need is dependent on several factors including including the width of your doorway, the amount of clearance you have around your doorway and the number of barn doors you would like to use. In this article we will walk you through the steps we use to determine the best type of barn door hardware kit for your doorway.

Measurements

The first step to determine the type of hardware you will need is to take accurate measurements of your doorway and the surrounding wall space. This will tell you if you can use a simple single-track kit or if you require a bypass kit.

Why Do I Need To Take Measurements?

Barn door hardware kits allow you to open and close your barn door by sliding the door along a track. You will need to determine if you have enough space on either side of the doorway to push the door to the side when opening it. Without accurate measurements, you won't be able to determine the correct hardware kit for your installation.

WHAT-TYPE-OF-BARN-DOOR-HARDWARE-DO-I-NEED-Measure-Doorway

Step 1: Measure Width of Doorway

Measure from the inside edge of one side of the doorjamb to the inside edge of the other side of the doorjamb. This measurement will tell you the total width of the area that you need to cover with the door(s).

WHAT-TYPE-OF-BARN-DOOR-HARDWARE-DO-I-NEED-Clearance

Step 2: Measure Clearance on Either Side of Doorway

Next you’ll want to determine how much clearance (wall space) you have on either side of the doorway. This is important because in order to open your sliding barn door, you’ll need to push the door to the side, opening up your entryway. First, start on the right side of the doorway and measure the distance from the inside of your doorjamb to the first obstruction on the right side of the doorway. This could be a wall, another doorway or anything that would block the door from sliding when you push it open. Make note of your measurement and then repeat these steps on the left side of the doorway.

Step 3: Single Door, Double Door (Bi-part) or Bypass?

In this step you will need to consider how many doors you will need for your opening. Here are a few points to consider:

WHAT-TYPE-OF-BARN-DOOR-HARDWARE-DO-I-NEED-Single-Door

Single Door - for narrower doorways, the simplest option would be to install a single door. You can usually tell right away if this option will work for you. We recommend that you have 2” of overlap between the sides of the door and sides of the doorway, when the door is closed. This gives proper coverage to the doorway and ensures that you can’t see through into the next room when looking at the doorway from an angle. For this reason, add 4” (2” for left side, 2” for right side) to the measurement you took in Step 1. This will be the ideal width for your door. If that amount is equal to or less than the measurement you have on at least one side of the doorway (the measurements you took in step 2) then you have enough clearance to mount a single door. Let’s look at an example:

WHAT-TYPE-OF-BARN-DOOR-HARDWARE-DO-I-NEED-Example-doorway

In this example our doorway is 30” wide. We have measured 36” of clearance on the right side and 28” of clearance on the left side. So if we follow the formula above, we will have:  30” (doorway width) + 4” (to account for overlap) = 34”. This is the minimum amount of clearance we need to have on one side of the doorway so that the door can completely open.

  • Left Side Clearance = 28” < 34” so there isn’t enough clearance to push the door to the left side of the doorway
  • Right Side Clearance = 36” > 34” so there is enough clearance to push the doors to the right side of the doorway

Because the doorway is relatively narrow and we have enough clearance on the right side of the doorway to push the door when opening it, we have determined that a single barn door and single door hardware kit will work best for our installation.

WHAT-TYPE-OF-BARN-DOOR-HARDWARE-DO-I-NEED-Double-doors

Double Door (bi-part) - with wider doorways that have sufficient clearance on both the left and right side of the doorway, a double door (bi-part) hardware kit is usually the simplest and best option. As both doors are on the same track, they butt together in the middle of the doorway when in the closed position and are pushed to either side of the doorway when opening the doors.

We recommend that you have at least 2” of overlap between the sides of the doors and the sides of the doorway. This gives proper coverage to the doorway and ensures that you can’t see into the next room when looking at the doorway from an angle. Now take the width of the doorway (measured in Step 1), divide that number by 2 and add 2”. We only add 2” because the doors butt in the middle of the doorway and do not overlap each other. This will tell you the ideal width for each of your doors. The width of the door is the amount of clearance you will require on each side of the doorway in order for the doors to completely open. Let’s look at another example:

What-Type-of-Barn-Door-Hardware-Do-I-Need-example-2

In this example, our doorway is 64” wide. We then divide that number by 2 to get 32”. We then add 2” (for the overlap) and that gives us 34”. The ideal width of each door is 34”. We now know that we need at least 34” of clearance on both sides of the doorway in order to fully open both doors.

  • Left side clearance = 38” > 34” so there is enough clearance to push the left side door to the left side of the doorway.
  • Right side clearance = 36” > 34” so there is enough clearance to push the left side door to the left of the doorway.

Because we have enough clearance on both the left and right side of the doorway, we can use the double door (bi-part) barn door hardware kit. If we didn’t have enough clearance on one or both sides of the doorway, then we would need to use a bypass hardware kit.

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Bypass - If you have gone through the steps above and do not have enough clearance on one or both sides of the doorway to mount either a single door or double door (bi-part) hardware kit, then you will need a bypass kit. With the bypass kit, the doors can be “stacked” on top of each other when accessing the opening, so they can be used when there is little or no available clearance on either side of the doorway. Once you have determined that you need a bypass kit, the next decision will be whether to use a regular (double track) bypass kit or a single-track bypass hardware kit. While there are many factors you may want to consider when choosing between these two styles of bypass kit (read our blog article “Single vs. Double Track Bypass Hardware Kit”) the main factor will be the amount of overhead clearance you have above your doorway. So the first step will be to measure the distance from the top of the door jamb to the ceiling (or other obstruction):

WHAT-TYPE-OF-BARN-DOOR-HARDWARE_DO-I-NEED-OVERHEAD-CLEARANCE

For our house brand of Dusty’s Rustic Rolling Doors bypass barn door hardware kits, the amount of overhead clearance required is 7-⅛” for our double track bypass kits and 5-¼” for our single-track bypass kits. Please note that this measurement is taken from the top of the door to the ceiling, so you will need to take that into consideration when planning your installation. The doors will typically sit about ½” off of the ground when mounted onto the hardware kit, so make sure to factor in that additional ½” when calculating the distance from the top of the door to the ceiling. If you’ve already ordered your doors, then you will want to take use the following formula to calculate the amount of overhead clearance you will have to install your hardware:

  • Distance from floor to ceiling (in inches) − Door Height (in inches) − ½” = Available Clearance to Mount Hardware

Let’s look at an example. Remember that the height of the doorway is not calculated as we are using the height of an existing door.

What-Type-of-Barn-Door-Hardware-Do-I-Need-bypass-kit

In this example, the distance from floor to ceiling is 96". Our door is 90" tall. Because our door will sit 1/2" off the ground, we will have 5-1/2" of clearance from the top of the door to the ceiling (96 - 90 - 0.5 = 5.5). As mentioned, the double-track bypass kits require 7-1/8" clearance from the top of the door to the ceiling and the single-track bypass kit requires 5-1/4" of clearance. Because we only have 5-1/2" of clearance, we would choose the single-track bypass kit.

Conclusion

Just remember that these suggestions are guidelines that assume that you want to be able to completely open up the doorway. You may have almost enough clearance on one side to do a single door installation, but not quite enough to completely open the doorway. This might mean that the door pokes into doorway by a few inches when in open position. If you are OK with that, then it is absolutely fine. This is your installation, so you decide what type of hardware kit would work best for you. If you are still not sure what type of hardware kit would work for you, reach out to us and one of our barn door experts will be happy to help!

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