Planning a wardrobe in an alcove or along a wall
An alcove looks like a ready-made cupboard. It is usually three different widths stacked on top of each other, with a skirting at the bottom and sometimes a chimney breast deciding the depth.
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Bay 1
Width at three heights
Measure the opening at the floor, at hanging-rail height and at the top. Use the smallest if a single carcase must slide in. The method is the same as in the measuring note, applied to each alcove on its own.
Bay 2
Depth and the breast
Depth is from the back wall to the face you are willing to have in the room. A chimney breast sets that face. Doors, especially hinged ones, add projection beyond the carcase. Include them, or the door will occupy the room you thought you had left.
Bay 3
What hangs inside
A long coat often needs somewhere around 1.4 to 1.6 metres of clear hanging length. Double hanging uses two shorter rails. Shelves and drawers take the rest. These are planning ranges, not a rule of a particular maker. The leaflet or the drawing of the interior sets the actual rail height.
Slopes, skirtings and doors
Loft rooms and top-floor conversions often slope. A rectangular carcase meets the slope in a triangular gap. People fill that gap with a shaped end panel, a lower run of cupboards, or by stopping the wardrobe where the ceiling is still high enough. Measure the height at the back wall and again at the front edge of the proposed depth, or the doors will hit the plaster.
Skirting can be scribed around, notched into the side panel, or removed along the run. Removing original skirting in a rented home or a listed building is not a casual step. If you are not sure you may alter it, leave it and plan the plinth or the side to stop against it. The gap that leaves is honest and reversible.
Hinged doors need a clear quarter-circle, or whatever arc the hinge allows, and they need that arc not to meet a bed, a radiator or another door. Sliding doors need a track, top-hung or with a floor channel, and a carcase that stays parallel. If the two sides of an alcove are different heights, a sliding track will show it immediately. Drawers inside the wardrobe need a carcase that is square; a twisted opening makes runners bind. The flat-pack note covers squaring a box before the doors go on.
Fixing and the way in
Fitted wardrobes are usually fixed back to the wall and sometimes up to a noggin or a ceiling batten. That fixing is only as good as the background, which the wall note describes in general terms. A freestanding double wardrobe can be heavy and top-heavy once it is full. Many makers supply a restraint and ask for it to be used. Follow that leaflet, and do not invent a fixing for a flue or a party wall.
Large sides and long tracks may not turn on a half-landing even when they would fit the alcove. Measure the route before the panels are finished, using the routes note. After the doors are hung, the checks in floors and aftercare are the ones that deal with hinges that need a small movement and with floors that must be protected while the work happens.
Along an open wall
Without an alcove, the wardrobe needs its own end panels. Allow their thickness in the overall width. Check the ceiling height at both ends and the floor level along the plinth. A run that starts tight to one wall and finishes in the room should have a finished end, not an exposed edge of the carcase, unless that edge is a material meant to be seen.
What to write on the sketch
- Three widths and three heights for each opening.
- Depth to the face of any breast, and the extra depth of the doors.
- Skirting height and thickness.
- Socket and switch positions inside the opening.
- Slope heights, if the ceiling is not flat.
- The narrowest point on the route from the street.