How to Convert Bi-fold Doors to French Doors

If you want to give your closet a more polished and elevated look, consider upgrading your bifold doors to hinged french-style doors. It is a particularly unfussy DIY requiring very little time, skill and cost. This is how we did it from start to finish!

When we built our Bunk Room, we created a double-sided closet accessed from both the bunk and primary bedrooms. The space was tight on both sides, so I opted for double doors instead of a single, and sourced inexpensive bi-fold doors to keep costs down. Rather than installing them on a bi-fold track for a basic builder-grade look, we attached them with hinges:

forest mural bedroom with dark stained pine wood doors

Side note: I realize french doors technically have glass, but people often use swing/pivot/french doors interchangeably, so I am using that term for this tutorial.

I had a few requests on Instagram to show how we did it, and as it turns out, it is a unfussy process that anyone can tackle with just a few tools and supplies.

Supplies

Non-mortise hinges
Magnetic Catch
Knobs or pulls

how convert bifold closet doors to french doors

Tools

Tape measure
Drill

Remove the existing door hinges

If your bifold doors were previously installed, you will also want to remove the track along the top, the pivot pins on the doors, and any other hardware it came with.

Measure and mark new hinge placement

Using three hinges per door, we followed standard door guidelines for placement—approximately 6″ from the top of the door to the top hinge, 10″ from the bottom for the bottom hinge, and the middle hinge centered between those two. You may have to adjust slightly depending on the placement of the screw holes from the original hinges.

Make sure the hinges are facing the right direction, with the pins visible from the front.

Attach new hinges to door

Pre-drill pilot holes at each screw location.

Then, attach the hinges with the provided screws. These heavy duty non-mortise hinges fold into each other without creating a large gap on the sides, so you do not have to route out a mortise as you would with standard hinged doors.

Attach hinges to door frame

Hold your door in place and prop it up off the ground at your desired height (ours are ~1/2″ from the bottom and 1/4″ from the top). Align the door so that the hinges fall along the edge of the door jamb. It is helpful to have another person for this part!

If you had an existing bi-fold track along the top, chances are there will now be a fairly large gap above your door. You can either fill this gap with a strip of wood along the top painted to blend in with your door jamb (this is what I would do), re-hang the door higher, or live with the gap if you do not mind it.

If you do not have an extra set of hands, this air shim genuinely comes in handy (for many projects!)

Install magnetic catch

To keep the doors in place when closed, install a magnetic catch along the top of each door. If your doors are hung lower, you may need to attach a piece of wood along the top of the door jamb to make sure the catch aligns with the magnets on the door.

We used one catch per door to make them extra secure, but if your magnets are strong, you could just use one catch in the center. You can also use a ball catch or an alternative mechanism to hold the doors in place.

Install hardware

We stained our doors by layering Minwax Gel in Coffee followed by Woodluxe stain in Mahogany. I finished them off with these rustic pulls to complete our traditional old-world Spanish look.

We are using the same knotty pine and stain on the doors throughout the house. It helps to keep the richness of the dark wood and the way everything is shaping up so far!

One last important note: there needs to be enough of a gap between the doors for them to open properly. The required gap size will depend on the thickness of your doors. For reference, our doors are 1⅛” thick, and we ended up with a 1/4″ center gap which is large enough for them to open at the same time.

If your doors are thicker, you may want to consider adding an astragal to cover this gap.

More ways to upgrade your bi-fold closet doors

If you just want the look of french doors but do not mind the bi-fold function, you can easily achieve this by adding another knob and changing the placement to the center—like Lauren did to her bi-fold closet doors:

You can also transform flat panel doors with shaker panels, unfussy box trim or cover any door with shiplap planks to change the whole look (with or without changing the function).