What to check before the wardrobe goes into production
Five things: the final dimensions of the recess after plastering and flooring, the depth needed for hangers and your chosen doors, the space to open those doors, lighting and sockets inside, and the wall the wardrobe stands against. If any one of them is left open, the wardrobe either will not fit first time or will be awkward to use every day.
The wardrobe is designed early, at the design stage, while the final survey happens late, once the finishes are done. This guide is about making those two moments work together.
Design early, measure late
It sounds contradictory, but that is how any good renovation runs. Cabling for lighting and sockets inside the wardrobe has to go in before plastering. So by the time first-fix electrics start, the width of the sections, the door type and the position of the lights must already be decided.
The final survey is done once the walls are plastered and ready for the last coat of paint, and the floor is down. In older Eixample buildings walls are rarely perfectly plumb, and being a couple of centimetres out over a three-metre height is normal. The joiner allows for filler strips, and you sign off the shop drawings before manufacturing starts. A wardrobe built from measurements taken before plastering nearly always has to be adjusted on site, and the joints show.
Depth and height
Clothes on hangers need about 60 cm of internal depth. Sliding doors take a few more centimetres for the tracks, so a recess for a sliding-door wardrobe has to be deeper than one for hinged doors. If depth is short, a pull-out front-facing rail is an option, although each section then holds less.
With ceilings over three metres, it is better to take the wardrobe all the way up, with no gap on top to collect dust. The top tier goes to seasonal items, or you fit a pull-down rail. At the bottom, decide early what happens with the skirting: either the wardrobe sits on its own plinth or the skirting is cut. If the floor is floating, the wardrobe is not fixed through the floor finish, because the boards need room to move.
The interior, in brief
How to design storage around what you actually keep is covered in a separate guide. Two technical details are often missed, though. First, count the metres of hanging rail per person, and long garments separately. Second, internal drawers behind a hinged door have to clear the hinges; otherwise the drawer hits the door and will not open. This is solved by setting the drawers back or using special hinges, but only at the drawing stage.
Doors: hinged, sliding or handleless
Hinged doors need clear space in front of the wardrobe, roughly the width of the door leaf plus room for a person. In a bedroom where the bed is 70 cm from the wardrobe, hinged doors will open, but standing in front of them will be uncomfortable. Sliding doors do not need that space, at the cost of only ever showing part of the wardrobe at a time.
Handleless push-to-open fronts look very clean but sometimes pop open at a light touch. The alternatives are a routed finger pull or a concealed handle profile. Floor-to-ceiling doors behave worse than standard ones and need straightening rods to stop them warping. If the wardrobe front has to sit flush with the wall, like a concealed door, it is drawn together with the wall. At the child psychology centre in the Eixample we fitted 24 concealed doors, and every surface was resolved in the same drawing as the wall around it.
The wall, damp and access to services
A wardrobe against an external wall in an old building, or in a flat by the sea in Castelldefels, is a risk area. The cold wall behind the back panel condenses moisture, and after one winter mould appears. We leave a ventilation gap, use a ventilated back or choose a different wall.
Another common mistake is hiding the heating manifold, a plumbing access hatch or the fuse board behind the wardrobe. If there is no way around it, a removable panel goes inside the wardrobe and its position is marked on the drawings.
Timing and next step
The sequence is: wardrobe design approved before first-fix electrics, final survey after the finishes, signed shop drawings, manufacturing, and installation at the end of the renovation with the floor protected. Lead times depend on the workshop and the material and are confirmed when the order is placed, so the survey is scheduled to make sure installation does not delay handover.
The joiner is coordinated by the same site manager who runs the rest of the works. Send us the bedroom plan, photos of the recess and a description of what you need to store. We reply within an hour.