If you are in an existing situation forget it.
Light switch on wall with pocket door.
Not going to work.
The other side of the pocket door is.
You can t cut them to run conduit down from the ceiling.
Would prefer to not shore out the walls thicker or have an exterior switch box.
Put a small night light in a plug close by to help with the extra couple of steps to get to the switches when the room is dark.
Many people falsely believe that you cannot have any wiring electrical outlets or electrical switches in the pocket wall but we have a nifty trick.
Our switch is in the bathroom on the opposite wall from the one the pocket door slides into.
One downside to the pocket door is that it often leaves little room for anything else in the wall such as plumbing or electrical such as outlets or switches so careful planning is required.
I installed a motion sensor light switch in my home office due to pocket doors causing the original switch to be at the end of the wall.
We have a pocket door between the bathroom and the master bedroom.
I recently installed 2 pocket door kits together from one room to an adjacent in my house.
However in two cases the ideal location is in the wall area of the pocket.
More about putting a light switch in a wall with a pocket door here.
If you were standing in the bathroom in front of the door you could turn the switch on with your left hand and slide the pocket door open or closed with your right.
Mount the pocket door to the surface of the existing wall then the plumbing won t be an issue.
Sometimes it makes more sense to place a light switche outside the door rather than inside.
The bathroom pictured above comes from.
This would be near impossible even in new construction and meet code.
Pocket doors could make it difficult to put a light switch exactly where you want it.
More about the placement of light and fan switches in one particular bathroom here.
The building inspector said he saw no problem with me installing a light switch in a shallow electrical box on the pocket door frame as long as i could properly secure the wire per code within 8 of the box.
Go to the nearest wall without a pocket door and place switches as close as possible.
The 1x4 on the door frame are running horizontal.