Handmade Solid Oak Wardrobes

A wardrobe is a room within a room. It has to hold a particular length of hanging, a particular quantity of folded clothes and a particular set of shoes, in a space defined by your ceiling, your skirting and the swing of the door.

That is why buying one off a shelf so rarely works: a stock wardrobe is too tall for the room or too shallow for a coat hanger. We make wardrobes to order, in solid timber, in Suffolk, to your room and to what you are putting in it.

The forms we make

Single door wardrobe. One hanging compartment, one door. For a spare room, a pair flanking a chimney breast, or a bedroom where a double will not fit. There is a small single wardrobe too, reduced for a cottage bedroom.

Two door wardrobe. The standard, in full hanging or split with hanging one side and shelves the other. Shown as the double wardrobe #106D in cherry.

Two door carved wardrobe, #931. The dressier version, with carving to the door panels, frieze and cornice. There is a plainer variant, #931SP, with the styled carving left off.

Chippendale-style wardrobe. Eighteenth-century cabinet detail: a moulded cornice, fielded panels and a lighter proportion than the country patterns. Sits naturally with the formal detailing of the Denbigh collection.

Gothic wardrobe in cherry. Pointed-arch tracery to the doors, in the manner of the Gothic collection, to go with a Gothic bed and dressing table.

Large breakfront wardrobe, eight doors and seven drawers. The largest thing we make for a bedroom. A breakfront is a run of cabinetry whose centre stands forward of the wings, breaking up what would otherwise be a wall of doors. Made in sections, so it can be got into the house and out again.

Press cupboard in mahogany. The older English form: a cupboard over a bank of drawers, the upper part for hanging or shelved for linen. Still the most useful piece where more clothes are folded than hung.

Freestanding or fitted — the honest answer

We make both, and we will tell you which your room wants.

Freestanding is right when the room has architecture worth keeping and you do not want to bury it. When the house is listed. When you may move, because a freestanding wardrobe comes with you. And when you want the piece to be looked at.

Fitted is right when you need every cubic inch: a chimney alcove, a sloping ceiling, a run from wall to wall with no dust gaps and no dead space above the cornice. When the wardrobe is meant to disappear. And when the space is irregular, because a fitted carcase is scribed to it.

We make fitted wardrobes, dressing rooms, panelling and whole rooms in the same workshop, to the same construction and finishing as the freestanding pieces. See fitted furniture.

There is a middle course: a freestanding wardrobe made to fill its alcove exactly, with a scribed filler and a cornice run to the ceiling. It reads as fitted and still leaves with you.

Inside

The interior is specified, not assumed. Tell us what is going in and we will draw it around that.

Long hanging for coats, short hanging doubled for shirts and jackets, adjustable shelves, drawers in the carcase or in a plinth bank below, shoe shelves, tie and belt rails, and a top box for what you use twice a year. Solid ironmongery throughout: exposed butt hinges, solid brass knobs and swan neck handles.

Depth is the specification people get wrong: a coat hanger needs clearance front to back or the doors will not close on a shoulder.

Timbers

Oak, cherry, mahogany and walnut are the standard four, and every wardrobe is made in all of them. Oak is the most common; the press cupboard shown is mahogany; cherry suits Gothic and the lighter Chippendale-style patterns.

Specials, quoted on application: character oak; pippy oak in light, medium and heavy grades, for door panels rather than framing; oak selected for medullary ray, within or without the timber; and clean timber with no knots at all, worth considering on a breakfront where the panel detail repeats eight times.

Modern and sheet materials are used where they improve strength: on a wardrobe back, a stable panel is better engineering than a wide board that will move.

Finishes: polished, painted, limed, sand-blasted, rub-through paint, natural, or colour matched to a sample. We can match furniture that is 100 years old to new reproduction purchases made the year before, which is how most wardrobes join a bedroom that already has a chest.

Order free timber and finish samples. A wardrobe is the biggest single area of colour in the room.

Made to your size

Every dimension is open: height to the ceiling or stopped below a picture rail, width to the alcove, depth to the hanging, plinth to clear the skirting, cornice adjusted or omitted.

Delivery drives the design as much as the room does. A tall wardrobe is made in sections, so it can be got up a stair turn and reassembled, with the doors hung on site. Send us the room dimensions and the route in. See bespoke and commissioning.

For the rest of the room, see beds, dressing tables and mirrors and chests of drawers.

Prices

Guide price on request, quoted by size, doors and drawers, timber, finish, interior fit-out and the amount of carving. Special timbers, colour matching and natural finishes are priced on application. Standard lead time is typically ten to twelve weeks, and a one-off commission four weeks longer.

Frequently asked questions