Fitted Wardrobes Cost Guide: What Actually Drives the Price

The carcass is the box behind the doors, and it is doing the structural work of holding rails, shelves and drawer runners for years without sagging. We build in 18mm moisture-resistant MDF as standard, because it machines cleanly, holds its shape and takes a sprayed finish evenly. Birch ply is the step up from that, used where internals are left open and the edge grain is visible as part of the design.

Melamine-faced chipboard is what most mass-market fitted wardrobes are built from, and it is the cheapest option going, but it is also the one most likely to swell at a damp corner or sag under a loaded hanging rail. We do not build with it. The material choice alone can move a quote significantly, and it is worth asking any quote you receive exactly what the carcass is made from, because that word is often left off the paperwork.

Span matters too. A long run with no intermediate wall to fix to needs a heavier carcass and more internal bracing than a short alcove wardrobe boxed in on three sides. The room survey tells us which we are dealing with before any price gets written down.

Doors are usually where the biggest jump in cost sits, because they are the visible surface and they carry the most labour. A flat slab door with a shadow gap is the simplest to make. A shaker door, built up from a frame and a recessed panel, takes more joinery time. A fully panelled or beaded door for a period property takes more again.

Material follows the same pattern. Painted MDF doors are the standard route and give a clean, hard-wearing finish once sprayed. Solid hardwood or timber veneer doors, used where a stained or oiled finish is wanted rather than paint, cost more in material and in machining time, and they need to be handled differently through the spray booth.

Sliding doors versus hinged doors is another variable. Sliding gear, running tracks and soft-close mechanisms all add hardware cost, and the carcass behind a sliding system is built slightly differently to accommodate the track. Neither is inherently better, it depends on the room and how much floor space you can give up to a door swing.

A sprayed finish costs more than a brush finish applied on site, and it is worth understanding why before deciding it is an area to save money on. Spraying happens in our workshop in a controlled environment, away from site dust, before the doors ever come to your house. That gives an even film thickness with no brush marks, no dust nibs and no drying time competing with a live building site.

Site-painted doors are cheaper to produce because they skip that workshop stage, but the finish is rarely as hard or as even, and it picks up whatever is floating around the room while it dries, which on an active renovation is often plaster dust or sawdust from other trades. Within a year or two the difference in wear becomes obvious, particularly on high-contact edges like handles and door bottoms.

The extra cost of spraying buys you a finish that survives daily use rather than one that looks good in the handover photos and starts showing marks within months.

The doors are what you see, but the internal layout is what you actually use every morning, and it carries real labour and material cost of its own. A basic internal fit-out with a single hanging rail and one fixed shelf is the cheapest configuration. A layout with long-hang and double short-hang sections, adjustable shelving, drawer banks and a raked shoe shelf takes more design time, more components and more fitting time on site.

Hardware adds up too. Soft-close hinges and drawer runners cost more than standard versions but they last longer and do not slam or drop under load. Internal lighting, pull-out accessories like tie racks or belt rails, and mirrored door inserts are all optional extras that we can price individually once we know what you actually want to store.

This is one of the reasons the CAD stage matters. Seeing the internal split drawn out before manufacture means you are choosing storage that matches how you actually live, rather than paying for a generic layout that leaves half the drawers empty and the rail overloaded.

Most of the houses we work in around Ipsden, Wallingford and the surrounding villages are not perfectly square. Walls bow, corners are out of true, and ceilings sometimes slope under a converted loft. A factory wardrobe assumes a straight wall and a level ceiling. A bespoke fitted wardrobe is built to be scribed to whatever the wall is actually doing, which takes more site time than screwing a flat-pack box against a straight surface.

Chimney breasts are a common example. Building a wardrobe run either side of a breast means two carcasses of different depths, a bulkhead detail above, and careful setting out so the doors still line up visually across the whole run. That extra design and fitting time is reflected in the quote, but it is also the difference between a wardrobe that looks intentional and one that looks like it was forced into a space it does not fit.

We are often asked to build in internal lighting, USB points or sockets inside a wardrobe or dressing area. We are happy to design for it, but the actual electrical work is carried out by a qualified electrician we work with, not by us directly, because that is not our trade and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

If your wardrobe design includes lighting or power, factor in the electrician's time alongside the joinery cost, and let us know early so the carcass can be built with the right cable routes and access points from the start, rather than chased out afterwards.

When you get a written quote, whether from us or anyone else, check it actually states the carcass material, the door construction, whether the finish is sprayed or site-painted, and what the internal layout includes. A number with none of that detail behind it is very hard to compare against anything else.

We give a free site visit, then a CAD design showing exactly what is being proposed, followed by a written fixed-price quote within 72 hours. That order matters: you see the drawing and understand the specification before you see the price, so the number means something.