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.

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.