Walnut pivot door in a travertine portal, Jumeirah

The brief

A new villa with a deep travertine entrance corridor needed a door at the scale of the portal: tall, quiet and warm against the stone, with a single long pull and nothing else on the face.

What we made

A flush leaf in bookmatched walnut veneer on a solid engineered core, with horizontal grooves routed across the face at even spacing, hung on a floor pivot with a hydraulic closer so the three metre leaf swings on a fingertip and closes itself. A full height black pull bar outside, a lever and mortice lock inside, and the frame finished to sit inside the travertine reveal so the stone runs unbroken around the opening.

Why it works

The portal does the framing, so the door only has to be flat, dark and tall. The grooves give the leaf a rhythm that matches the stone courses, and the single black pull reads from the far end of the corridor. The pivot was planned with the floor build up before the travertine went down.