Building a walk-in wardrobe to measure

A walk-in wardrobe is the only wardrobe you do not buy but build. You make it out of whatever space happens to be there: a hallway, a corner of the bedroom, the landing, or the side of a sloped ceiling where nothing else fits. That is exactly why it so often goes wrong when you take it out of a brochure, and why it belongs with bespoke carpentry and fitting.

What that looks like in real life is on the project page for a walk-in wardrobe with sliding doors in a hallway. On one side full-height sliding doors in a wood look with recessed handles, on the other side units with doors, open compartments and a worktop, with the washing machine tucked away underneath next to a bank of drawers. Behind the doors are white shelves, drawers and wire baskets. A hallway is exactly the kind of space you normally just walk through and do nothing else with.

What makes made to measure different from a wardrobe system off the shelf

There are three differences in it, and only the first is the one everybody mentions.

The first is the size. A wardrobe from the shop comes in steps, and whatever is left over you fill with a panel or leave open. Made to measure runs right up to the wall and right up to the ceiling, and that top strip is usually just the space the suitcases and the boxes go in.

The second is what you build against, and that is where most of the work sits. Walls are rarely square, floors rarely flat, and there is nearly always something in the way: a skirting board, a service duct, a radiator, a frame sitting too close to the corner. So I measure every upright separately instead of copying one size across, and the wardrobe is made to fit on site instead of screwed together.

The third is the layout. A system wardrobe works off an average. Somebody with a lot of dresses and long coats needs a different wardrobe from somebody with stacks of jumpers and thirty pairs of shoes.

When a wardrobe system from the shop is the smarter buy

Then the part you rarely read on a page like this. If you have a straight wall on an ordinary size, no sloped ceiling, no duct, no skirting board in the way and no wish that goes further than hanging and stacking, a wardrobe system from the shop is almost always the better buy. The same result for less money, and you can adapt it later or take it with you.

Made to measure only earns itself back the moment something is off. A sloped ceiling. An alcove of an odd size. A wall that comes out wider on one side than on the other. If none of that is there, you are paying me for craft you do not need, and I would rather say that straight away than after the quote has gone out.

A walk-in wardrobe under a sloped roof

Under a sloping roof made to measure pays off most, because by definition nothing standard fits there. The split is nearly always the same: hanging space on the high side, because a coat on a hanger needs height, and the low strip along the knee wall for everything you do not hang up.

That low strip is not dead space, but it needs a different solution from a shelf, because anything lying deep in there you never see again. Drawers or pull-out baskets that come towards you do work, and shoes sit well there, because you look at those from above.

Watch two things under a roof. A roof is rarely the same on both sides: the angle on the left is not the angle on the right, even if it looks that way. And the height where you can still stand upright decides where the walkway goes, not the middle of the room.

Turning a small bedroom or a landing into a walk-in wardrobe

These are the two spaces most enquiries are about, and they ask for something completely different.

The small bedroom

Usually the third bedroom, too small to really sleep in and too big to leave empty. You can fill two walls with a walkway down the middle, or do one wall and keep the other side clear for a mirror and light.

Watch the ventilation. A room without a window, or with a window that never opens, becomes a damp problem the moment clothes hang in it: clothing takes up moisture and gives it off again, and in still air you smell that within a season. Look at that first, before you look at the layout. And settle it with yourself deliberately that you are giving up a bedroom. No reason not to do it, but it is something you see again if you ever sell.

The landing

In almost every house the landing is the space nothing happens with. There is room, but it is narrow and there are doors opening onto it. Wardrobe depth comes straight off the walkway here, the doors that swing open have to be able to stay open and the route to the stairs has to stay clear.

So on a landing I would sooner go for shallower units on two sides than one deep wardrobe, and sliding doors are often the only serious option here. Exactly what happened in the photos of that hallway wardrobe: full-height sliding doors on one side, cabinet work with a worktop on the other, and what is left is a hallway you simply walk through.

The layout: hanging, stacking, shoes and drawers

This is the only place where a walk-in wardrobe really becomes yours. So I start with the contents and not with the wardrobe: I ask what you have, not what you want.

Long hanging and short hanging. Coats, dresses and long skirts need a section over the full height. Shirts, blouses, jackets and folded trousers do not, and there you can have two rails above each other. That doubles your hanging space in the same wardrobe, and it is the cheapest gain there is.

Shelves. For jumpers, jeans and everything you do not want stretched out on a hanger. One warning: a stack always ends up higher than you think when you are drawing it, and the bottom jumper you never see again. Better more shelves with less room between them than a few deep compartments.

Shoes. They want a column of their own or the bottom strip, and boots want height the rest does not need. A slightly sloping shelf shows you the toes instead of only the heels.

Drawers. Socks, underwear, belts, jewellery, everything that disappears the moment it lies on a shelf. Drawers are the most expensive metres in a wardrobe and at the same time the metres that make the most difference day to day. Wire baskets are the cheaper in-between: you see what is in them and they pull out too.

Sliding doors, hinged doors or open

Sliding doors take no space in front of the wardrobe. In a hallway, on a landing or in a narrow room that is often what decides it. The drawback comes with it: you only ever have part of the wardrobe open at once, because one door slides past the other. The track top and bottom and how flat the floor is decide the rest, because a sliding door that does not hang plumb runs heavy and starts to catch.

Hinged doors give you the whole wardrobe in one movement and are simpler to maintain, but they need clear space in front. Put a bed or a radiator too close to them and you have a wardrobe you can only get half open.

Open is the cheapest and the best looking in photos. In real life it is an honest test of how tidy you are, because everything lying there is permanently on show and it gathers dust faster. For some people that is exactly the point, for most it is not.

Lighting

A walk-in wardrobe without light is a wardrobe you stand in with the torch on your phone. Colours do not come out right under the hallway light, and you only notice that once you are outside.

What works: a light strip in the top edge or under the shelves, or spots in the ceiling above the walkway instead of above the wardrobe, so you are not standing in your own shadow. A switch in the door or a sensor is handy, because this is the place where you stand with your arms full.

I prepare that inside the carcass and make sure the wiring runs out of sight, so there is no cable hanging over a shelf. Connecting it to the consumer unit is work for an electrician, and I would rather say that up front than halfway through.

How I go about it

I come and look, measure the space up and walk through with you what has to go in it. After that you know what fits, and only then does anything go on paper. I order material once the layout and the fronts are settled, because changing a wardrobe round when the boards are already there is expensive.

If the walk-in wardrobe is part of a renovation of a whole floor, I take it along in the same job, so the join with the rest stays in one pair of hands. If the floor is being replaced as well, the order matters: flooring and tiling first and the wardrobe after, or the other way round if you would rather not pay for floor underneath the wardrobe.

If it is an existing wardrobe that just needs a different layout, a sliding door that no longer runs or a shelf that is sagging, that is not a new wardrobe but odd jobs and maintenance.

Otherwise send me a few photos of the space and the sizes you have through the contact page, and I will tell you what I would do, even if the answer is that you are better off buying a wardrobe for this.