Getting Creative with Access Panels

All houses have them. Access panels. The ugly metal doors we end up hanging a picture over and hopefully never have to use. Or even worse, a metal access panel on your ceiling.

Access panels don’t need to be unsightly though. With some proper planning and creative design you can integrate them into your house and they become nearly unnoticeable.

The first thing you need to consider is where the access panel is located. Is it on the ceiling or a wall that will be visible in a room that is finished (ie – not a garage or storage area)? There are numerous tape-in gypsum solutions on the market. Bauco Access Panel Solutions is my go to flush, gypsum access panel. You can get standard sizes or pay a little more for custom sizes. I use standard sizes for water shut offs and electrical access points, and I opt for custom sizes for ceiling access for HVAC fan coil filters that need larger access for maintenance.

You can also apply tile over these if you wanted (in a dry location).

Planning ahead for your access panels during the framing and rough-in MEP process is important as well as checking the install spec sheet so that you frame it and have the sheetrock prepped accordingly.

The install of Bauco access panels is easily done by whoever is installing your sheet rock and the end result is a clean 1/8″ reveal around a wall. The access panels are touch latch and the door can be entirely removed if needed.

Don’t let access panels become an unsightly fixture of your home.

A more creative way to hide access panels is to integrate them into cabinetry. This requires more work than a standard access panel because it not only requires special framing considerations, but the cabinet builder also needs to make accommodations within their cabinet for the access point.

In the photos below I was able to put an entire radiant manifold behind a cabinet. To get to the manifold for maintenance, which is rare, you have to remove all the cabinet drawers. Behind the drawers the cabinet has a typical cabinet back but with a finger pull. When you pull on the finger pull the cabinet back releases with magnets and gives you access to the manifold. Without a creative solution like this, there would have been a 3’x3′ access panel on a visible wall which would be less than ideal.

The back of a cabinet can be used as an access panel for just about anything. The access panel is hidden behind drawers or clothes unseen.

Another cabinet access panel solution is to take advantage of all the wasted space within a toe kick. Recently I was able to hide dozens of LED drivers within toe kick space. Remember if you put something like a driver in a toe kick you need to make sure the toe kick is vented. I did this by having the front carcass of the toe kick face left low and then left a gap at the top of the finished toe kick board that you can’t see because the toe kick is set back a few inches typical. To access the drivers we used a finger pull clasp.

The hollow void of a cabinet toe kick can be utilized as an access panel for small light drivers. You must check on what type of ventilation is required before hand.

Another creative access panel system I did was for interior pocket doors. All the interior doors on a project I was on were pocket doors that pocketed behind cabinet walls. I was able to take advantage of this and add small 6″x6″ access panels on the top cubbies of the cabinets for future adjustment of the pocket door. Most of the time when you need to remove a pocket door or do some significant adjustments you end up opening a wall to get to the track. But with some proper planning you can discreetly place small access panels to make future maintenance easier.

In a perfect world you wouldn’t need any access panels because everything would live in a remote mechanical room with easy access. But since that rarely happens we as builders must start getting creative with access panel solutions.