Bespoke Hinged Wardrobes

A hinged wardrobe sounds like the simplest thing a joiner can build, and in one sense it is: a carcass, a door, a hinge. What separates a considered version from an ordinary one is almost entirely in the proportions and clearances that decide how the doors sit, swing and close. Door width, door height, the gap left for the swing, and how the whole run meets the walls, floor and ceiling either side are all settled before a single panel is cut, rather than assumed from a standard size.

Door proportions matter more than most people expect. A door that is too narrow relative to its height looks mean; one that is too wide can feel heavy and needs a stiffer hinge and, often, a support to stop it dropping over time. We work out door widths against the overall run length and the number of doors wanted, aiming for a rhythm across the wall that looks settled rather than divided arbitrarily to fit a standard carcass width.

Room clearance is the other half of the equation. A hinged door needs somewhere to swing, and in a smaller bedroom that space competes with a bed, a chest of drawers or simply the route to the door. We check swing clearance against the furniture already in the room, and where space is genuinely tight we discuss whether a hinged door is still the right choice for that particular section of the run, or whether a narrower door with a smaller swing arc suits better.

Full-height doors, taken close to the ceiling rather than stopping at a standard 200-220cm, are increasingly common and change the proportion question again: a taller door needs a hinge specified for the extra weight, and panel or frame detailing recalculated so it does not simply look stretched. Handles, where used, are positioned against the finished door height rather than a fixed midpoint borrowed from shorter furniture.

Internal access is worth thinking about alongside the doors themselves, since a hinged wardrobe's doors decide how much of the interior is exposed at once. A single wide door reveals the whole carcass in one movement; a run of narrower doors gives more targeted access but more visible joints across the wall. Neither is right or wrong, but it is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by default.

Panel detailing, cornices and skirting are where the wardrobe stops being a piece of furniture and starts reading as part of the room. A run scribed to the skirting at the base and returned into an existing cornice at the top removes the shadow gaps that give freestanding furniture away, and painted or timber finishes can be matched to existing woodwork so the whole wall feels of a piece.

The result, done properly, is a wardrobe that opens and closes well for years, sits comfortably in the room it was built for, and does not draw attention to the fact that it was built rather than bought — which is, in the end, the point of a hinged wardrobe done well.

Part of our fitted wardrobes collection