Ok, what are the dangers in this mindset? Well, I think that analogous to other home renovations (not as involved or fixed), installing fitted wardrobes should be treated as an investment to your home. Ideally, you would want to add value to your home. This is of course looking at the situation from a financial point of view. If you choose to sell you home some time in the future, you obviously want the most you can get for it. Just note that this advice isn’t simply limited to wardrobes.

So say if you bought cheap fitted wardrobes and when installed, they do in fact look cheap. This would not reflect well on the house value. A possible scenario might be that the potential buyer would think to themselves – “Gee, the house is great, but that wardrobe needs to go. It’s going to cost X dollars for me to remove, so I’m going knock that much off my offer price, otherwise it’s just not worth for me to buy”.

Another point is that if you manage to find a manufacturer who will be willing to build and install your fitted wardrobe cheaply, are they compromising on something? For example, are they using inferior quality material? Where are they sourcing their stuff from? If the end product sitting in your bedroom is poor, you can expect that it won’t last long and before you know it, you’ll need to replace it which is going to cost more money.

Is the manufacturer cutting cost some other ways? Maybe they are using off-the-shelf or merely modified standard products, which means what you get is not truly a fully customized fitted wardrobe. Or possibly, they won’t offer designing from an expert and that is left up to you alone without help. Are you going to be compromising on customer service? Will they factor into their build, components to prevent growth of moulds inside the wardrobe (and hence on your clothes).

Finally, what about guarantees or more importantly, insurance backed guarantee? If they secretly know that what you buy from them won’t last more than 6 years, they might only guarantee the wardrobe for 5 years. If the company closes its operations, will they still be contractually obligated to make repairs on the wardrobe you bought from them?

So to close off, be wary of what may look like saving money now but may become costly down the road. You should think of the long run.

From a practical point of view, the purpose of a fitted wardrobe is to store your clothes. Well, this is true for other furniture like closets, drawers and shelves. How did they come about? In the past, homes were not traditionally built with significant storage spaces for clothing. The trend of walk-in closets had not arrived. Fitted wardrobes tend to be large and particularly deep providing ample room for someone to keep a lot of clothing items in them. Hence, people got these installed.

Additionally, most of the time, people got their fitted wardrobe custom built such that they can organize their different pieces of clothing articles in the way they want. They would augment their wardrobes with a variety storage option configurations such as the hanging space, drawers and shelving. So a fitted wardrobe not only represented space, but also a form of organization tool. It offered convenience for the user to easily and quickly access the clothing they want at the time.

Generally being large, fitted wardrobes are more suitable for correspondingly big bedrooms. Assuming this is true, the fitted wardrobe can make the bedroom look that much more impressive on the eyes. A bedroom that was once large and empty, void of any aesthetic appeal, can be improved from the presence of a nice looking fitted wardrobe. Since it does get attached to the bedroom and is not free-standing, if you intend to live in the house for a long time, it wouldn’t hurt to consider this type of wardrobe. Even if you do eventually decide to sell the house and move elsewhere, a fitted wardrobe is likely to add more value to your home in the eyes of the potential buyer.

So there you have it. The above only scratches the surface on what fitted wardrobes can offer you. You should do more research if you’re thinking of buying one for your home since it is a large sum investment.

There exist big sized companies in the furniture industry that claim to produce bespoke fitted wardrobes when in fact, after a bit of further probing, they actually use standard type components almost extensively. They might only have available a small range of sizes in their products or at best, they might modify the standard components to retro-fit for your usage. This cannot compare to fitted wardrobes that are completely customized.

How customized can a bespoke fitted wardrobe be? This depends on the manufacturer. If they are really the best of best in their line of work, you can literally have an infinite number of possibilities that’s only really limited by your imagination. Of course this is subject to the physical constraints of your room. Here is a sample list of what is possible:

• Size – wall-to-wall, continue around corners, angled.

• Handles

• Doors – choose either hinged or sliding. Other than personal taste, this would also depend on size of your room. If efficient use of space is top priority, then you would go for a fitted sliding wardrobe. With the hinged, you can choose either ‘lay-on’ or ‘in-frame’. The former is more modern with the hinges hidden from sight on the outside whilst the latter is more traditional with the butt hinges showing.

Storage components and arrangement – different combinations of hanging rails, drawers, tie racks, shoe racks, adjustable or fixed shelves, even rotating shelves. The storage options are very flexible here.

Styling & Finish – you can choose either traditional looking, contemporary fitted wardrobes, or design anything in between. For example, a traditional style might be with a natural wood finish or with painted wood; and a contemporary style wardrobe might be a fitted sliding wardrobe with tinted mirror panels. You can make your fitted wardrobe stand out in your bedroom or completely blend in almost seamlessly.

It is quite apparent that bespoke fitted wardrobes are in no doubt more costly than your run-of-the-mill wardrobes, so why on earth would someone pay for such a thing? Three big reasons – space, flexibility, appearance. Yes, it is preferable that you have a large room to start off with, but with a completely customized wardrobe, you can better utilize the space that you have. For example, if you have a sloping ceiling or an alcove area, then getting someone to tailor make a wardrobe for such awkward spaces would allow you to better use an otherwise vacant and wasted spots. The flexibility in the storage options you can have offered by a bespoke fitted wardrobe speaks for itself. Lastly, you may not be able to find a standard wardrobe that matches well with your bedroom. With a fully-tailored wardrobe, you significantly reduce this issue.

Attic Fitted Wardrobe

Choosing to install a fitted wardrobe depends on a few factors. Firstly, how handy are you? What experience have you had in the past in terms of putting together furniture items? Another question to ask is how much time do you have that you can commit to such an undertaking? Also, would anyone else be helping you or is this going to be a one-man (or one-woman) task? If you work full-time in another job and do this with one other person, and both of you don’t know much about the process, then don’t expect much results too soon. You’ll just be seeing weeks of unfinished material sitting around your bed.

One other factor is how customized do you need the fitted wardrobes to be? If your room is very unique in that there are unusual slopes and angles in the dimensions, then you may need fully customized wardrobes. If not, you can get pre-assembled wardrobes where you are only required to install into the room itself.

Ok, the other safer approach is to call in a professional. Yes, this is obviously the more costly option, but things are less likely to go wrong since these guys do this for a living. Note that I say, “less likely” rather than guarantee that there won’t be disastrous errors. This is where you need to be wary when you pick someone to do the construction and installation. There are few things to keep in mind when looking for a pro.

When speaking with them, request for a clear price guide. If they refuse this, then ask them why. This is should transparent.

Also, ask them what kind of experiences have they had with rooms of different dimensions and shape; ask them to show you photos (or brochures) of these works. The idea here is to get a good idea of the quality of their workmanship and whether they would be able to handle your particular room circumstance.

Try to gauge how they respond to you during your conversations with the potential installer. Here, you want to know what the customer service is like. In similar fashion to any other service company, they should be approachable and willing to listen. The communication is important since you’ll be providing specifications on the fitted wardrobe.

The way to approach this is to think logically and methodically. Firstly, ask yourself, “What is the purpose of a wardrobe, any kind of wardrobe?”. Think for a minute. Got the answer? Storage space of course. You want some place to put your clothing items for easy and frequent access. So this should be your first criteria on choosing between the two styles. If the room in which you intend to keep your wardrobe does not already have any storage or if you wish to completely replace your current form of storage, then fitted wardrobes is likely to be a good way to go. However, if you have a smaller wardrobe or closet of some sort at the moment that you want to keep using, and you just want to add to that collection, then a stand-alone wardrobe would be preferable.

Now that we have functionality covered, there is another practical consideration. The room in which you want to put your wardrobe. There are two main factors – the space available for the wardrobe and the layout (or shape) of your room. If you live in a small apartment and your bedroom is proportionately small then it may not be suitable to install a fitted wardrobe. In such an instance, stand-alone is better. The amount of space you need to allow for your wardrobe should also factor in accessibility. Sure, you you manage to just fit your ideal wardrobe in the room, but then you realize you can’t get to it or move around it! Also, if you choose to have a hinged door as supposed to a sliding door, this open-close swing space needs to be factored into the space available for the wardrobe. As for the layout of your room, I’m not just talking about along the width and length of your room. I’m also referring to the height. If the ceiling is design with a slant or the walls are oddly shaped (e.g. concaves, etc) then this will affect the style of wardrobe you can have.

After all that, you finally need to always keep in mind the cost of getting the wardrobe. Even if you identify the perfect wardrobe, if it’s going to cost an arm and a leg, pushing your budget, then think very carefully. Are you going to fully utilize the wardrobe space or is it just for looks? Being more practical especially in these tough economic times make more sense than trying to beat the Jones.