HIDDEN assets
Not just for ScoobyDoo anymore — the secret door is having a moment
Tabitha Kane is a co-host of a true crime podcast so it might not come as a complete surprise to learn that when she and her husband were planning a new house for their family in Dallas, she cooked up the idea of adding a secret room.
At first, the couple thought they’d get their contractor to make the door to it look like a wall cabinet. But then they found an Arizona firm named Creative Home Engineering that rigged up a faux fireplace for Kane’s home office that rotates to provide entry to the room when a member of the family places a hand on a biometric touch pad that recognizes their fingerprints.
“It makes the house more fun,” Kane said.
Armchair sleuths aren’t the only devotees of the open-sesame game these days. Hidden doors and secret rooms have become an increasingly popular feature in American houses, whether the goal is foiling burglars, eking out extra storage or creating so-called safe, or panic, rooms for doomsday scenarios.
And then there are the do-it-yourselfers who just like geeking out on things such as pivot hinges. Or those who are still in thrall of beloved childhood books and shows, like “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” with its portal to Narnia, or Scooby-Doo cartoons, in which characters are always dropping through trap doors or stumbling onto secret passageways. And that’s not to mention those who are enamored of the mechanical marvels of Indiana Jones or James Bond movies.
No one appears to keep track of how many such sleights of hand are cropping up in American hous-
es. But evidence of interest abounds: Houzz, a website that connects homeowners with design and remodeling professionals, reported that searches on their site for the terms “trap doors,” “kitchens with hidden pantries” and “speakeasy home bar lounge” had all more than doubled between 2022 and 2023. The subject has inspired all manner of blog posts, subreddits and Pinterest boards. On TikTok, posts on the “Hidden Room” account have garnered some 165,000 likes.
Companies that make prehung, ready-to-install doors that masquerade as bookcases and pool cue racks say that business started booming at the height of the pandemic in 2020, when Americans holed up at home dove into renovation projects. Some homeowners who turned bedrooms into offices for remote work swapped out regular closet doors for ones that double as shelving units to make the spaces more functional, as well as more professional-looking on Zoom calls.
Hide-A-Way Doors, a Tennessee company whose standard products start at $1,250, had between 77 and 135 orders a month in 2023, said Christopher P. Rupell Sr., the company’s chief executive. And Home Depot added goods from a business named Murphy Door to its website in 2021 and introduced them to some stores last year to keep up with the “rising trend,” said Madison Stevens, a representative for the company.
TAKE ANY FORM
Part of the fun is in the trigger that opens the door, which can take practically any form, from a book to a beer bottle. One company sold out its bronze-hued Shakespeare bust with a head that tilts back to reveal a switch — presumably to fans of the campy 1960s Batman television show who may have fondly recalled the Caped Crusader using such a device to gain access to the Batpoles descending to the Batcave.
Architects and designers who work on luxurious houses may turn up their noses at such gags, or at the synthetic board, MDF, used in some of the manufactured products. But they’re not above playing hide-and-seek, too, especially when creating a seamless-looking space.
The architecture firm MKCA recently added a jib door — one that’s mounted flush with the wall, often without a frame or visible hinges — for a powder room on the parlor floor of a gut-renovated brownstone in Brooklyn, N.Y. The firm had the door painted the same pale blue as the wall and added a baseboard molding so it all but blends in.
“I can think of few instances where I’ve said the words ‘hidden door’ and clients said, ‘no, thank you,’” Michael K. Chen, the firm’s principal, recalled. “Who doesn’t want a secret door in their home?”
The contrivances have a long, varied history.
HIDDEN DOORS
The ancient Egyptians used hidden doors in pyramids to thwart thieves who might be after the riches intended to accompany deceased Pharaohs into the afterlife. Centuries later, secret passages in medieval European castles were designed to allow occupants to survive a siege.
At the turn of the 20th century, financier J. Pierpont Morgan had architect Charles McKim design a jewel-box library next to his house in New York — now the Morgan Library & Museum — with bookcase doors in walnut and fruitwood that maximize shelf space while providing staff easy access to spiral stairs leading to the second and third tiers of the repository. (Slender brass handles are the only giveaway.)
In another room on the same floor, movable bookcases in Morgan’s own study likely hid his stash of “naughty” volumes, said Jennifer Tonkovich, a Morgan curator. On a recent morning Tonkovich gently pushed back one of the bookcases, then slid in front of it an adjacent bookcase that smoothly rolled across on a brass rail, revealing a previously concealed opening for books that, she noted, “maybe a gentleman wouldn’t want everyone to see.”
SPEAKEASY-STYLE ROOMS
Recently, some companies have been creating speakeasy-style rooms harking back to Prohibition days to add interest to workplaces. But secret rooms are much more common in houses, according to companies that make and sell doors for them.
Lee Spangenberg said that he got into making doors that double as shelves and cabinets after he and his wife tried to shoehorn a crib, a changing table and an array of toys into their son’s room when he was a baby. The closet door, Spangenberg decided, could be working harder.
At first, he thought he would call his company Space Utilization Doors, but then he switched to Secret Doorways to emphasize mystery rather than functionality. He makes and installs his handiwork in houses within a reasonable driving distance of his workshop in central Ohio and sells hardware kits ($119-229) and plans to contractors and hobbyists farther afield.
“Ten years ago everyone wanted to put barn doors into their house,” Spangenberg said. “Now a lot more people are doing this type of thing.”
HIDE GUNS OR SAFES
Some homeowners use secret rooms to hide guns or safes, or to provide a place to shelter during a hurricane or even, perhaps, Armageddon — although likely none are as extravagant as the 5,000-square-foot underground bunker billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly building in Hawaii.
Steve Humble, the founder of Creative Home Engineering, noted that his company makes “high security” doors with steel cores — which, he said, are “bulletproof” and “built like a bank vault.”
Julie Petty, who lives outside Denver, didn’t have anything to hide, unless it was the detritus of daily life with two teenage sons and two dogs. She and her husband bought their 1980s house in 2019 and hired Laura Medicus, an interior designer, to help them remodel it.
The Pettys wanted builtin storage in the dining area, which had two doors on the same short wall — a windowed one leading outside to the yard, and a solid one leading to a finished basement space that functions as a den, study and sometime guest room.
BOOKCASES INTO DOORS
The door leading downstairs “was not in a comfortable place,” Medicus said.
The Pettys bought three bookcases from a local cabinet shop, and worked with a trim carpenter who figured out how to turn one of them into a door. He also rose to the challenge of installing the new-to-him hardware, including a pivot hinge that mounted to the top of the door opening as well as a bottom pivot that was bolted to the floor. Now that the door is installed, the Pettys make sure to put only lightweight items on it so it opens and closes easily.
Other designers have disguised doors to home bars.
Tammy Connor, an interior designer, and D. Stanley Dixon, an architect, added a tiny bar to the library of a 1930s home in Atlanta, tucking it behind a narrow door faced with the room’s blue-painted paneling. And in a New York penthouse apartment, Yellow House Architects and the decorating firm Redd Kaihoi slipped a bar into the arched, paneled section of a hallway off the living room. When the bar’s pocket door is closed, the space is hidden from sight; opening the door and sliding it into a wall slot leaves the hall clear.
ONE LEADS TO ANOTHER
For some homeowners, installing one trick door leads to the idea for another.
Matthew and Tara Duhan, board game enthusiasts with two sons, paid Hide-A-Way, the Tennessee company that makes pre-hung doors, about $10,000 to build a blackstained hickory wall unit for the basement of their house in a Chicago suburb, requesting cubbies deep enough to fit their chunky cardboard board game boxes. One section of cubbies is actually a door, and when one of the Duhans presses on a certain box, it clicks the button on a key fob inside and — voilà! — the door opens to their wine cellar.
The Duhans then ordered a white-painted door with built-in shelves and a cabinet (about $1,250), to solve a problem in their foyer. There, opposite the front door, had been what appeared to be the door to a coat closet — which meant that visitors were always opening it looking for a hanger only to find the house’s HVAC unit. Now the shelves hold framed family photos, and visitors have no clue what’s behind.
“I almost forget it’s a door myself,” Tara Duhan said.
MORE HIDDEN DOORS
As for the true crime podcaster and her husband, they didn’t stop at their revolving fireplace, which leads to a tornado shelter, and cost around $30,000. They also ordered hardware for three more hidden doors and had their contractor build them, then install them in their children’s bedrooms.
In their daughter’s room, a door that looks like an ordinary wall mirror opens to a hangout area for her and her friends. An athletic son’s mirrored door leads to his trophy room, and a son who’s a YouTuber has a section of a paneled wall that opens to a studio where he makes videos.
“When they show their friends the house, this is what they show first,” Kane said.