Fitted Wardrobes Derby

Made-to-measure wardrobes for Derby homes

A freestanding wardrobe is built to a standard size and dropped into a room that is not. It leaves a gap above, a gap beside it, and a back corner nobody reaches. A fitted wardrobe is made to the exact width and height of the wall, so the storage runs from floor to ceiling and wall to wall, and the doors finish against the walls and ceiling instead of stopping short of them.

We design, make and fit wardrobes across Derby and the towns around it. Each one is measured on site, planned around the clothes and things you actually own, and assembled in the room, which matters in older houses with narrow stairs and in rooms where a ready-made unit would never fit through the door.

Fitted wardrobes we make

These are the wardrobe styles we make most often. Many rooms combine two of them.

• Sliding door wardrobes
• Hinged door wardrobes
• Mirrored wardrobes
• Alcove & built-in wardrobes
• Handleless wardrobes
• Walk-in wardrobes & dressing rooms

Fitted, built-in or made to measure?

People search for fitted, built-in and made-to-measure wardrobes, and the terms overlap. A built-in wardrobe usually means one built into an alcove or recess, using the walls as part of the structure. A fitted wardrobe is made to fill a wall or a space exactly, often with its own sides and back. Made-to-measure describes both: sized to your room rather than to a catalogue. All three are what we make; the right one depends on the room.

Compared with freestanding furniture, a fitted wardrobe uses the full height to the ceiling, leaves no gaps to collect dust, can be built around chimney breasts, windows and sloping ceilings, and stays with the house. It costs more than a flat-pack wardrobe, but holds far more for the floor space it takes.

Sliding or hinged doors?

The choice that shapes everything else is the door. Sliding doors run on tracks, so nothing swings out into the room. They suit narrow bedrooms, rooms where the bed sits close to the wardrobe, and long runs across a whole wall. You see one section of the interior at a time, so the layout behind each door is planned to match.

Hinged doors open the whole interior at once and suit traditional styles such as painted shaker panels. They need clear space in front of them to open, roughly the width of the door, so they work best where there is room between the wardrobe and the bed.

Both can be mirrored, painted, wood-effect or glass, and both can be built with or without handles. Mirrored sliding doors are the most common choice in smaller Derby bedrooms, because they bounce light around and save finding wall space for a separate mirror.

Door finishes

• Mirrored

  Full-height mirror panels make a small room feel larger and save finding space for a separate mirror. Tinted or grey mirror is softer than clear.

• Painted

  Smooth or shaker panels painted to any colour, which suits period houses and lets the wardrobe match the walls or stand out from them.

• Wood-effect

  Oak and walnut effects are warm and hard-wearing, and hide fingerprints better than gloss.

• Glass

  Coloured or frosted glass panels give a modern look, and can be combined with mirror in the same run.

• Handleless

  Push-to-open doors or a recessed finger pull keep a run of wardrobes plain and calm, which suits modern rooms.

• Mixed panels

  Sliding doors can be split into panels of different finishes, such as mirror between painted sections, to break up a long run.

Planning the inside

The interior decides whether a wardrobe works day to day. Long hanging for coats and dresses, double rails for shirts and folded trousers, internal drawers, shelving for jumpers, and racks or pull-out shelves for shoes all take different amounts of space. We plan the inside around a quick list of what you own, rather than a standard set of fittings.

Depth matters more than people expect. A standard hanging rail across the width of the wardrobe needs a carcass around 600 mm deep, or sleeves and hangers rub on the doors. Shallower spaces, such as chimney alcoves, work better with end-on pull-out rails, shelves or drawers. Lighting inside the wardrobe, switched by the doors or by a sensor, makes a deep wardrobe much easier to use; hard-wired lighting is connected by a partner electrician from Derbyshire Specialists Group.

Wardrobes for every kind of Derby bedroom

The house usually decides where the wardrobe goes and how it is built.

• Victorian and Edwardian terraces

  The chimney breast usually leaves an alcove each side. Built-in alcove wardrobes use both, with the breast left open for a dressing table, and every panel is scribed to walls that are rarely straight.

• 1930s and post-war semis

  The box room often has a bulkhead over the stairs. A wardrobe can sit over it with a shallower base, and sliding doors avoid the door hitting a single bed.

• Loft conversions

  Under a pitched roof, freestanding furniture leaves a wedge of wasted space. Each carcass is cut to follow the slope, so long items hang in the tallest section and the low end becomes drawers or shoe storage.

• New-build homes

  Bedrooms are often smaller and walls are plasterboard on studs, so wardrobes are fixed into the studs or with proper hollow-wall fixings. Builder’s wardrobe recesses can be fitted with doors and an interior instead of a full carcass.

Walk-in wardrobes and dressing rooms

Where a spare bedroom or a large main bedroom allows it, a walk-in wardrobe or dressing room gives open hanging, shelving and drawers that you can see at a glance, often with a dressing table and good lighting. It needs space to stand and turn between the runs, so it suits larger rooms or a section partitioned off with a stud wall. Open storage of this kind can cost less than the same length of wardrobe with doors, because the doors are often the most expensive part.

Fitted bedrooms and bespoke storage

A fitted wardrobe is often the start of a fitted bedroom. The same joiners can build matching drawer units, bedside cabinets, a dressing table between two wardrobes, or overhead storage bridging the bed, all in the same finish so the room is planned as one.

Away from the bedroom, we also build bespoke cabinets and shelving: alcove shelving and cupboards in living rooms, storage around a television or fireplace, and units made to fit awkward corners where nothing off the shelf will go.

The shelving below is one of ours: a full wall of floor-to-ceiling shelves with tongue-and-groove backs, LED strip lighting under every shelf, cupboards along the base, a recess shaped around the column radiator and a rolling library ladder for the top rows. Work like this is assembled in the room as a bare carcass first, then filled, painted and wired for the lighting.

Under-stairs storage

How it works

1. Survey and measure. We visit, measure the room and the access, check the walls, floor and ceiling, and talk through what you need to store.
2. Design and quote. You get a written quote for the design, doors, finish and interior, with no charge for the visit.
3. Made to measure. The wardrobe is made to the room’s actual sizes, not the nearest standard width.
4. Fitted in the room. Our joiners assemble, fix and scribe the wardrobe in place, so it fits however narrow the stairs or uneven the walls.

Bought a fitted wardrobe system from a supplier? We also offer an install-only service, so you can choose the product and leave the fitting to us.

Derbyshire Joinery Specialists is part of Derbyshire Specialists Group, founded by Liam Taylor, who has more than ten years in property and joinery.

Fitted wardrobe questions