Sliding wardrob doors - do I need hardware or not?

[thomashenry]

I've installed some Ikea wardrobe cabinets along one side of my bedroom, and now need to build a wall-wall-floor ceiling frame and sliding doors to sit in front of the cabinets. Total width 3.5m, hight 2.4m, and I'm going to have two doors at 1m wide on the outsides, and 2 of .75m wide on the inside.

I'm going to make the doors of 20mm thick poplar frames with 9mm ply panels, each one 6 panels I would imagine.

Ideally I don't want to use any hardware - I'd prefer the doors to just sit and slide in channels in the frame. Is this realistic, or will a 75x230m door tip rather than slide? I'd put some low friction feet on the doors (graphite, PTFE, whatever), and I guess I could line the bottom of the channels with something as well.

Anyone have any direct experience of trying this... and failing/succeeding?

 

[MikeJhn]

I couldn't get four 750mm x 2400 doors to slide without tipping, in the end they where hung from tracks attached to a beam in the loft.

 

[thomashenry]

I couldn't get four 750mm x 2400 doors to slide without tipping, in the end they where hung from tracks attached to a beam in the loft.

Are those 750mm wide.. they look narrower? Maybe my visual judgement is poor. Out of interest, what lengths (if any) did you go to to try and get them to slide without tipping? I have a few ideas of things to try, but perhaps I'm barking up thw wrong tree...

 

[MusicMan]

Suggest looking at Japanese sliding door designs, though your construction plan may be too heavy for those.

 

[MikeJhn]

Your right, they are narrower, my cutting list is not available at the moment and I'm not at the house to measure them, in my minds eye they where 750, but I think they are half that, sorry for any confusion.