We've been making built-in wardrobes in our Batemans Bay workshop since 2011, for new builds, renovations and tired old robes that just need new life. Here's the general guidance we give people about sizes, doors and small bedrooms, with one rule up front: every room is different, so we measure every room.
How deep should a built-in wardrobe be?
Depth is the measurement people most often get wrong. A coat hanger is wide, and clothes need room to hang straight without brushing the doors. That's why many built-in wardrobes are made around 600 mm deep. You'll see the question "is 45 cm deep enough for a wardrobe?" a lot, and the short answer is that it's tight for hanging clothes side-on. A shallower robe can still work well for shelves, drawers or a linen press, and sometimes a hallway or a small bedroom only has room for that. When I measure, I'll show you what fits the space and what you'll actually store in it.
Standard width and height
There isn't one standard width in Australia, because a built-in wardrobe is built to fill the recess or wall you've got, from a single-door robe in a kid's room to a long run across a main bedroom. Height is the same story: many built-ins run floor to ceiling, which uses the space above the hanging rail for shelves and stops dust collecting on top. Ceiling heights vary from house to house, so we measure on site and make the carcass and doors to suit.
What goes inside
Inside, it's about how you live. Most new builds get the everyday fit-out: hanging, a few shelves and drawers. When the brief's bigger, we build the full fit-out with drawers, shoe racks and double hanging, where two rails stacked one above the other double the space for shirts and jackets.
Sliding doors: mirror, glass, textured colour or raw MDF
Our sliding wardrobe doors come in four finishes: mirror, glass, textured colour and raw MDF.
Sliding doors are the right call in most bedrooms around the Bay because they don't swing out into the room. In a small bedroom, a hinged door can take up as much floor as the wardrobe itself.
New doors for an existing wardrobe
If your robe is in good shape but the doors have had their day, we can measure the existing opening and make and fit new sliding doors to suit, in the same four finishes: mirror, glass, textured colour and raw MDF.
Small bedrooms
Small rooms are where a made-to-measure wardrobe really pays off. A stock flat-pack size rarely fits a recess exactly, and the gaps either side become dead space. Built to the wall, a wardrobe uses every bit of width and height. Add mirrored sliding doors and the room looks bigger than it is.
On the day
Once your wardrobe is made in our workshop, we book the fit in with you. Our team takes the old unit out, put the new carcass and doors in, walk you through it and tidy up before we leave. Every wardrobe we build comes with a two-year warranty, and we fit them from Surfside and Long Beach to Broulee and Moruya.