Open plan gives you the light and the sightlines, and lets the cooking smells travel with them. Put up a solid wall and the smells stop, but so does the daylight. Glass gives you one without costing you the other: the rooms stay separate, the light carries straight through, and you can still see who’s at the table from the hob. Every panel is cut to your opening, and the glass can be clear, frosted where you want less on show, or printed with a design of your choosing.
Sliding doors run on a top channel alone, so there’s no arc of floor kept clear for a door to swing into and no track underfoot for crumbs to collect in. That makes them the answer to the openings a hinged door was never going to work in: a narrow galley, a utility off the kitchen, a pantry squeezed in beside the units. Where a hinged door does suit the space, it mounts to the wall as usual, or on hydraulic hinges that let it open from either side.
A framed door sits in an aluminium or black profile with a gasket between the glass and the frame, which closes the gap around the edge that smells and noise would otherwise travel through. It’s the option to choose if the kitchen opens onto a living room you’d rather keep free of last night’s cooking, or if the dishwasher tends to run while someone’s watching television next door. The black frame is also what gives you the Crittall look that suits a kitchen-diner, without building anything solid.
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