Screen doors are lifesavers in the spring and summer. When you want fresh air to flow in and out of your house, but want to keep annoying bugs away from your food and your bedsheets, screen doors are the optimal solutions.
However, you have to remember to shut your screen door or at least make sure it’s fastened each time you walk through! Otherwise, bugs and dirt can sneak in all day long. Door screen magnetic closures are ideal fixes, as they automatically attach an open screen door or curtain to your door frame.
Not sure how door screen magnetic closures work? Let’s break down how magnetic closures from brands like Flux Phenom work and explore their benefits.
Magnetic Attraction Explained
To grasp how the magnetic closure on a screen door works, you need to know how magnetic attraction works overall.
In a nutshell, magnetic attraction is a fundamental property of electromagnetism: one of the four fundamental forces in physics. A magnet, like the kinds installed on many screen doors, creates an invisible magnetic field around itself. Magnets are usually made of ferromagnetic metals like iron.
When it comes to electromagnetism, opposites attract. Each magnet has a north and south pole, which helps to describe the flow of electromagnetic energy around itself. You can think of the north and south poles as places where positive and negative electric charges flow.
When you put two magnets near each other, they’ll attract each other if their north and south poles are close by. That’s because opposites attract! However, the opposite occurs if you try to put two magnets’ north poles or south poles together. They’ll push back against each other instead!
So, to make any kind of magnetic enclosure or attachment, manufacturers create magnets with opposing poles or charges opposite each other.
So, How Does This Affect Screen Doors?
Now that the physics lesson is over, let’s move on to screen doors. The purpose of any screen door is to close quickly, quietly, and firmly to prevent bugs and large debris from getting indoors while still letting fresh air flow freely.
Many screen door manufacturers use magnets to make sure that their screens close properly and automatically; after all, it’s easy to forget to close a quiet screen door behind you, especially if you are just running outdoors for a brief moment.
Magnetic enclosures or door attachments allow people to use their screen doors and let them fall shut behind them automatically. Imagine a screen door with a south pole or negative magnet installed in the door frame and a north pole or positive magnet installed on the sliding door itself.
When the door nears the doorframe, the magnetic attraction should pull the door to the frame and seal the portal. Easy, quick, and usually quiet!
“Curtain” Magnetic Screen Doors
There are two broad types of screen doors that use magnets for their core functions. The first type includes curtain magnetic screen doors.
In essence, these look like screen curtains that do the same job as traditional rolling screen doors. However, they aren’t bolted to a doorframe or rail so they don’t use wheels. Instead, they have magnetic strips along their middles and bottoms.
The magnetic strips are very weak; that is, their magnetic fields do not have a lot of power. But that’s beneficial since it means you don’t have to push the screen curtains very hard to get through! Otherwise, they’d be very annoying to use.
The main benefit is that the magnetic strips along the center and bottom automatically pull the screen curtains closed whenever the curtains fall back into place. This seals the inside of your home and prevents bugs or dirt from getting inside.
Flux Phenom’s door screen magnetic closure is a perfect example of this flexible and versatile door screen. It works for practically any doorway, as well, including doorways made of materials like metal or wood.
Standard Screen Doors with Magnets
That said, many people don’t like magnetic screen curtains because they look strange and because they can become tangled in things. On top of that, their magnets are the only means of sealing the curtains; if the magnets fail or weaken over time (which can happen), the curtains don’t do as good of a job of keeping bugs out as before.
Standard screen doors that roll on rails can also have magnets. They just have magnets near the handles or on the centers of their edges. When you bring a rolling magnetic screen door near the doorframe, the two magnets attract each other and seal the doorway. It makes a more secure seal compared to just closing the door without any lock or fastener.
All in all, magnetic door screen closures and curtains are easy to use, safe, and clever ways to harness the power of physics to keep your home cool and clean at the same time. Consider installing a magnetic door screen closure today!
