Bespoke Corner Cabinets

Corners present a particular design problem because two walls meet at an angle that standard furniture, built to a rectangular footprint, cannot use efficiently. A conventional cabinet placed diagonally across a corner leaves triangular voids behind it on both sides, while one pushed flush against a single wall ignores the adjoining wall's space entirely. A cabinet designed for the corner itself closes both gaps and uses the full depth available.

Door access is the first practical question in any corner design. A single door opening outward from a deep corner cabinet can require significant swing room in a room that may not have much to spare, so we look at alternatives including bi-fold doors, lazy susan carousels for base cabinets, or simply open shelving where a door is not needed at all. The right answer depends on how the piece will actually be used day to day, not on a single default solution.

Angled walls compound the challenge in older properties, where corners are rarely a true right angle. We measure both walls forming the corner independently, since a small discrepancy between the two can otherwise show up as a visible gap once the cabinet is fitted. Shallow cabinetry, built with less depth than a standard unit, sometimes suits a corner better than a deep one, particularly where the room's proportions are already tight and a bulky piece would dominate the space.

Display cabinetry works particularly well in a corner, since the angle itself can become a feature rather than a problem — a glazed corner cupboard catches light from two directions and gives objects inside a presence that a flat wall run does not offer in quite the same way. We plan lighting into these pieces at design stage, whether a simple interior light or shelf-edge LEDs.

Drawers in a corner unit need particular care in their geometry, since a drawer box has to be square and true even where the cabinet's outer casing follows an angled front. We design the internal carcass to keep drawer runners running true, regardless of the angle presented to the room.

Room proportions matter more in corner cabinetry than almost any other type of fitted joinery, because a corner piece is seen from two directions at once as you move through the room. We consider sightlines from the doorway and from the main seating or working area, so the cabinet reads well from wherever it is actually viewed, not just from directly in front.

Where a corner sits beside a window, door, or another piece of fitted furniture, we check these junctions carefully during design, since a corner cabinet that works in isolation can still clash with a nearby door swing or skirting run if these are not considered together from the outset.

Part of our bespoke cabinetry collection