Building Secret Doors in Houses

Rooms

• If you want to build a secret door that leads to a hidden room, you obviously need to have space for that room somewhere in the house. Building a hidden door in an existing house means that you'll have to block off one of your rooms or part of a room to have somewhere for the door to lead. In addition, creating a secret door often takes up more room than a regular door, so you lose more space. Calculating for space requirements during a new home build is easier than having to cannibalize space from an existing room for the door.

Passageways

• Not all hidden doors need to lead to a separate hidden room. Instead, you could consider building a secret passageway that allows you to enter and leave the house unnoticed, or to move between rooms through a secret hallway. The only problem with this solution is that for the passageway to be truly a secret, you actually need to build two secret doors. The doors at either end could use the same mechanism or could be hidden in different ways to give you some variety.

Concealment

• For a door to be secret, you need to hide it. This means concealing the fact that a door is present and hiding any seams that might indicate something abnormal. The door itself can be concealed by using oversized furniture, such as a bookcase, to cover the opening. Seams that aren't covered, such as when the door is hidden in a wall panel, can be covered up using trim that overlaps the seam.

Mechanisms

• You need a mechanism that opens the secret door and is easily disguised in the room. Old classics include a book that pulls out from a bookcase to reveal the passage or a candle holder on the wall that needs to be turned to open the door. More modern solutions include doors that open when a code is entered into a control panel or computer or that are operated by remote control. Companies that specialize in installing secret doors sometimes also build custom opening mechanisms to the specifications of the home owner so that the option for a truly unique door is available.