With single photos in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom,we present an efficient bidirectional quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol is proposed. The participants’ secret messages can be transmitted directly in a quantum channel through performing different local unitary operations, which are chosen by the two participants separately from the Pauli operations and Hadamard operations, on the polarization states and the spatial-mode states of single photons. Each single photon in two degrees of freedom can carry two bits of information. Thus the capacity of quantum communication of our protocol is improved. Moreover, we discuss the security of our QSDC network protocol comprehensively. It is showed that the proposed scheme not only can defend several outsider eavesdropper’s attacks but also can remove the drawback of information leakage, which prevents the secret messages being leaked out to other people through the public information. In addition, our protocol is practical since the preparation and the measurement of single photon quantum states in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom are available with current quantum techniques.