[Closed] Fitted wardrobes - HOW MUCH?!

Don't know how handy you are but I built this out of 18mm MDF, the pic is it unpainted. Primed with Zinsser 123 then hardwearing paint over that. Not decided on whether to put sliding doors across the front of it or to put roller blinds across the hanging bits.

All in cost before doors or blinds is about £300-350 plus a couple of days to build it.

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ikea.

We had a set made for our bedroom, same as you just on a flat wall with no features.

Ours are around 3m long, and cost in the region of £3k. Tried a couple of places and they all came in at a similar price. Seems wardrobes are an expensive game.

Either get in a joiner or buy the IKEA ones.

Custom fitted is nice, while IKEA ones just work.

Either get in a joiner or buy the IKEA ones.

Custom fitted is nice, while IKEA ones just work.

This.

Sharps et al will offer an massively eye-watering price, which they will generously reduce to a price still vastly above what you should be paying for their questionable quality.

I've "custom" fitted Ikea ones before in several houses.
Easy enough to either just use the sides or modify the opening to take the Ikea ones whole.

Make them yourself, get a local joiner to do it, or go IKEA.

Sharps are expensive cheap shit.

As I understand it, Sharps work like kitchen salesmen. They won't just give you a clear price and will try to get as much out of you as the possibly can. I woud stay away if I was you.

Screwfix, Wickes, B and Q and others sell the doors and the rails, so you can build one with them.

I hate to say it but I went to Ikea and got mine there, happy with them and the lots of different storage options to set them up as you want. The Mrs loves them.

Thanks for the advice so far.

I've used Ikea before and whilst perfectly adequate we are really looking to go down the fitted route this time (floor to ceiling ideally).

Have considered a joiner, what do you reckon they would charge for something similar to nothermatt's effort above, say 3/4 the length and with sliding doors?

Am fairly handy so also tempted to give it a go myself and save a fortune, would probably end up with some cool tools as part of the deal too.

northernmatt - more pics please!

I've had IKEA wardrobes (Pax?), and they're absolutely rock solid. Enough size combinations to fit pretty much any space too.

Sharps are complete hard sell shysters. They're the same shyster group as Moben kitchens and Dolphin bathrooms.

Sharp's was used as a generic analogy btw - but somewhat glad to hear that they are as criminal as I suspected.

Any less shystery alternatives?

Seriously, IKEA.

http://m.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/systems/10364/19053/19086/

Or local joiner.

Fairly certain that I don't want Ikea - i'm trying to gauge pricing for a local joiner

If you don't like the Ikea doors on offer, one other solution is to use the Ikea wardrobes (eg the frame and internal fittings which are great) with other brands' doors which opens out your choices

Sharps are expensive cheap shit.

Or as I've found, sharps are expensive good quality fitted wardrobes...

Horses for courses innit...

I gaffawed at the cost of the Sharps built in wardrobes (2 x 1.5 m open faced wardrobes, sliding shoe rails,and a portion in a sloped ceiling. And 2x 4 drawer tall 1.5m wide chests). However, although a local fitter was about £1000 less, we opted to pay the premium for Sharps to book in a time, date, and actually do it before the carpet went down.

I looked at the IKEA route, but (though it pains me to say), the floor to ceiling Sharps one we've got really DOES maximise space, look great, and I actually found the salesman to be calm and honest (and I'm the most cynical git when dealing with people selling stuff - I have to deal with drug reps etc etc)

Yes, it was a LOT, but I'm glad we got it..

DrP

We had Sharps round and he quoted £6k for a 1.8m sliding door wardrobe, just fitted with double rails.
Once we stopped laughing, he immediately dropped it to £3k, then took off various offers and got it down to £2.2k. We'd already decided after he actually told us they would be £6k there was no way we would use them, even if they dropped it to a grand...

We eventually moved into a different room for our bedroom and I found a place called Gliderobes online. They've got a really good online configurator thing and we thought it was quite good value. There website is www.diyslidingwardrobes.co.uk
Ours is about 3m wide, 2 sliding doors and fully fitted with rails, shelves, soft close drawers, soft close on the doors etc. It's a German sliding door system we went for - Raumplus I think, but they do cheaper options than we went for (and more expensive come to that...)
All in, I think it came to about £1900 fitted and I am really pleased with it.

As DrP says above, fully fitted means that we can fit all our clothes in and make best use of the available space. There was no messing around, delivery was brilliant and the fitter was there about 5 mins before the delivery turned up.
I probably could have spent a bit less and done it myself or modded some Ikea units, but am pleased we did it the way we did.

I detest IKEA but it's hard to argue with what you get for the price. We are looking at changing the doors on our built in wardrobes to go full floor to ceiling height as there is a lot of wasted space, we where quite pleasantly surprised by quality and price of B&Q (very large store near us with extensive range). The cost today of going full custom build with quality solid wood is quite eye watering. As with Kitchens and Bathrooms what we pay for re-fitting is a fraction of a new build cost.

6 grand?

You could get two sets of curtains for that! 😆

The Miss' (I'd not moved in yet) paid about £2k 10 years ago, about 3m wide, 2.5m high.

Having just bought a house I'm slowly getting used to how much all this crap actually costs!

Even boarding up the back of the garage where for some unknown reason there isn't a wall is going to be about 10x more than I initially thought in my head!

On the plus side the electrical work is only coming in at about 30%.

The B&Q doors are mostly from spacepro/ispace/stanley though I found that B&Q were the best priced for them

The taller IKEA PAX is close enough to floor-to-ceiling in many rooms. I've gone that route before with simpler setups (cutting down cabinets to fit) but we have two 130cm wide spaces either side of a chimney breast to deal with, we wanted doors and I just couldn't work out how to chop up the bits to make all that work.

We had a guy make them for us instead in MDF, drawers are IKEA which saves a bit of cost over custom-made ones and you can use all the standard IKEA drawer liners, organizers, etc. Cost about £2k (unpainted) but it fits perfectly in a weird space, looks good and the layout is exactly what we wanted.

Looking at it I could probably have done it myself but realistically it would have taken me ages and I just don't have the time. It is a crazy amount to spend (when a couple of flat-pack wardrobes that sort of fitted the space would have been a fraction of that) but materials plus a few days of a skilled person costs quite a bit.

Got a local firm to install a bespoke wardrobe. Full height (circa 2.8m and 1m deep and full length of wall (4.6m). This included two wardrobes one very tall for the wife's dresses and a shorter smaller section for me. In between were cubby holes for shoes / clothes and shelving for outdoor gear.

Quotes were approx. £1800 with doors opening outwards and £2500 for full height sliding doors.

We opted for the sliding doors as a bit of thought proved opening doors would have been a right pain.

Expensive yes, but awesome!

There were some other custom features which upped the price but overall it was worth it.

Unfortunately we have moved house now but we really miss the fitted wardrobe.

[i]Fairly certain that I don't want Ikea - i'm trying to gauge pricing for a local joiner [/i]

Get one in, then you'll find out.

Thanks guys! I'm starting have a rough idea of how much putting what's in my head into reality is going to cost.

I've just got off the phone from a fairly local chippie whom had a good website with images of sliding wardrobes he had installed - he said he currently had too much work to come out as far as my location but I was able to get out of him a thumb in the air price - he said to cost at around £650 per door on a sliding door system.
So £2k on a 3 door sliding unit kind of falls in line with the above.
He also gave me details for a local wardrobe firm that I assume he uses to source doors etc.

I will also investigate the links above. Cheers guys. Keep it coming too.

IKEA Pax wardrobes are brill. Absolutely solid and 2.2m high, plus loads of different internals.

We had bespoke wardrobes made by a local cabinet maker and they came in at about £1k each. Made from solid pine, completely custom design to fit the alcoves in the house either side of the fireplace. Look superb and being full height (over 8') we get loads of storage space.

IKEA. Look good enough, well made, not expensive. But you need some basic DIY skills.

We had bespoke wardrobes made by a local cabinet maker and they came in at about £1k each

See, I know Sharps are known to be pricey, but our wardrobes (OK, sans doors..!) came in at about that price...

DrP

I fit kitchens and bathrooms for a living, have all the kit to make building and fitting wardrobes easy. We still bought IKEA ones as to be honest, for what little they cost I couldn't be arsed making them. They're OK quality, good even, especially for the £.

Has anyone mentioned Ikea?

lolz. Yeah, I get the point 🙂

Who dat?

slimjim - it still looks pretty much the same as that except it's now painted. Where the bare MDF edges were I got some D profile stripwood and put some quadrant round where it meets the walls. Once her indoors decides on what to do about doors/blinds it'll look different.

It's about 700mm deep in the alcoves and the middle is around 250mm deep, height is sheet of MDF height so 2.4m but we have very high ceilings. If I'd had the time/skill I would have used the concealed swivel type fixings like you get with most flatpack. The rails are just generic chrome stuff from B&Q and pushed through from either side so there's no visible fixings for them.

Ikea Pax wardrobes are good as well. We have one in the spare room from the old house. Has the all important shoe rack thing for the woman.

I had to modify some ikea PAX extra height wardrobes to "fit" around the roof that doesn't joint our walls at 90 deg (skilions?) - there's a 45 deg section about a foot long. They reach to within about 10-15cm of the ceiling and look to all intents and purposes like fitted wardrobes.

Ok, so I require some more measuring up, but im currently thinking that I may be able to build a small section of stud wall myself, and within the footprint created I could potentially install a bunch of the Ikea Pax units along with a sliding rail.

As I could theoretically put the stud wall at any position I choose, I could account for the optimum width of Pax.

Are you taking a bigger room, and turning it into a 'bedroom' and 'wardrobe area' via the stud partition?
If so, yes - you could place the stud where you please so as to maximise space use.

We did that. Now there's two studs in our bedroom...fnar fnar...

DrP

DrP - Member

We did that. Now there's two studs in our bedroom...fnar fnar...

DrP

It's ok - he'll be gone by the time you get home.....

How rude.
I mean't we've got a split partition, as in one stud wall from the left, one from the right. No door, so it's a walk in wardrobe area...

DrP

(chuckle - of course I didn't mean this...).

Yep!
Essentially I want to utilise an open area, by butting the wardrobe up against 2 walls (into a corner) , and building a stud wall on the other 'side' to clearly differentiate the space.
Essentially, I don't want the exposed side of the wardrobe to be a bare carcass.. I want to see wall.
The stud wall would also act as a kind of corridor into the main area of the bedroom. Where the magic happens.

Doesn't Harry live under the stairs?

Where the magic happens.

DrP

If you are in the south East, try Lovebedrooms.com .

Speak to Dan.

I build wardrobes for a living.

I used to be a designer (read salesman) for Hammonds and also for Betta Bedrooms. They're both better than Sharps. After a while I figured that I could build furniture as good for half the price. (Half the end of night, midnight call to the sales manager, I shouldn't be giving it away at this price don't tell the boss I'll get the sack price, not the Initial quoted price.)

The advantage these firms have over B&Q, Ikea etc. are that they have a few (but only a few) more or less standard sizes. And they'll fit them in a day or two. AND they have solid backs, not cardboard.

If the sizes are right for you you can make a good job with the flatpack stuff. The hinges etc are nothing as good as the Blum ones I use but when does that really matter? But the key is to measure really accurately and get some Contiboard or similar cut to the internal dimensions and use that instead of the supplied backs. Then you're doing OK.

If you're handy you can make a decent job of the sliding doors from B&Q, Homebase, Argos (they all use the same ones).

I'm based in Stafford and I really must update my website with some of my latest work. www.smartrooms101.co.uk

All my doors are made to measure, so I look at the span required, take off the bit either end for infils and door clearances, framing (if required) then divide by the number of doors. If I need 2037mm x 453mm doors, that's what my supplier at www.auniquechoice.co.uk (sorry can't get it to embed) sends me.

Oh, and a tip - If you use Betta Bedrooms (or Betta Living) for a quote, as long as you say no, far too expensive, in about 4 weeks they contact you again and send somebody round who offers you a fantastic deal. Knocks another 50% of the best previous quote.

Bigjohn - thanks for that. Plenty more links for me to peruse. I had a quick look and have seen a nice looking black framed sliding door system on the BettaLiving page.

We got quoted 5k from Hammond's or something . Two 2.5 m walls. Said no and found space slide instead. Didn't buy doors actually just an open wardrobe. Solid material (still MDF) but substantially better than IKEA stuff. 2x3 times the quality it feels like.

Spaceslide.co.UK