New trends in fitted furniture. It’s new trends that keep the wheels turning in most industries and the bespoke fitted furniture market is no different.

Mostly in  the wardrobe or bedroom market and to some extent in lounge furniture and to a lesser extent in home offices, high-gloss is the flavour of the month.

Let’s take a look at what’s out there: High gloss is available in vynil wrap, laminate, curtain coated polyester, acrylic and hand-polished lacquered mdf. Most high-gloss doors are plain and flat but vinyl wrap also comes on panelled or ‘routered’ doors.

There are wide variations in the price, and quality of the various types of cupboard doors and broadly they are as follows:

Vinyl wrap. This is one of the cheapest door types but has two disadvantages: vinyl is a soft material, easily damaged and will dull down over time. Also, the wrap is quite thin and will show the imperfections in the  surface of the mdf substrate on which it is applied. The imperfections cannot normally be seen in the matt finish wood effects or plain colours but the light reflecting off the gloss finish will reveal every bump in the surface.

Laminate. Also, cheap and tougher than vinyl but is cut from large sheets of melamine faced chipboard that needs to be edged with an applied edging strip made from a softer pvc material that will not match the melamine surface and is often done as a contrast detail. You either like the look or you don’t. Again, the bumpy surface of the chipboard tends to show through and the gloss is duller. The manufacturers of the boards sometimes descibe this as an ‘entry level’ product.

Curtain coated polyester. The toughest and highest gloss of all with a mirror like finish. The high-tec, high cost plant required to curtain coat means that this product is only made in long production runs and it is only available in standard sizes and is not really suitable for bespoke or custom-made furniture.

Acrylic. Bright colours and good depth of gloss but scratches easily and expensive.

Hand-polished, lacquered mdf. The ideal material for the bespoke cabinet maker to work with. Any colour is possible and the hand-polishing removes all imperfections. Not the cheapest way to go but the lacquers (developed in the motor industry) provide a tough, durable surface and the only one that can be repaired just as your car can be resprayed.

The lacquers are sprayed on by hand, so the components can be individually made  with all the flexibility required for truly bespoke manufacture.

For the discerning client looking for  top-end high quality, high-gloss fitted bedroom or living room furniture click here to talk to a designer.

Options Fitted Furniture are proud to be suppliers, through their trade division, Phoenix Doors, of bespoke bathroom cabinet furniture to Ripples.

Examples of Options bespoke fitted bathroom cupboards can be seen here.

Well done Ripples, an excellent example of how to trade through challenging times.

 As the founder of Smallbone of Devizes, Mark Wilkinson has had more influence on the fitted furniture industry than any other person. Although he primarily designed for fitted and even un-fitted kitchens, much of his creativity is reflected in other areas of the home, from fitted bedrooms to home studies.  His products are at the top end of the market and he always uses the finest raw materials and does not compromise on quality.

 Much of Mark’s output is manufactured from real hardwoods and he was the pioneer of the hand-painted look in custom-built kitchen and bedroom furniture.

Although he has, rightly, been a strong defender of his own interlectual property and quick to challenge plagiarism, the Smallbone ‘look’ is now as fundamental a part of the British furniture oevre as those of Chippendale or Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

You can find his influence here http://www.optionsfit.com/photo-galleries-furniture264.html.

The OBE is the culmination of a number of awards for services to interior design, skills training and charity.

Well deserved and well done Mark.

This Gothic wardrobe and bedside cabinets was custom made and truly a “one-off” .  We were able to interpret the customers basic concept and produced an installation that Count Dracula would have been proud of and the client was delighted with.

Give us a challenge and we will rise to the occassion. It may not be cheap but it will fulfill your fantasy.

More pictures here

We have also seen a healthy upturn in the level of enquiries and requests for appointments.

The new enquiries seem pretty even across fitted bedrooms, home offices and living rooms.  Some even from new home owners and plenty of  people embarking on new portfolio careers that involve working from home.

Is the recession over or is it going to be a double dip? There is an expert out there espousing every possible outcome so there will be plenty of gurus claiming ‘I told you so’ whatever the result.

Still we are looking forward to a bouyant run up to Christmas and we certainly learned some useful lessons about the need and opportunties for divesification during the lean months. We are now well in to the market for bespoke reception desks and custom made commercial kitchens.

My first new appointment was with a really nice couple way out in Essex who were looking for high gloss wardrobes and a dressing table. They had had quotations from Hammonds and another company but could not get exactly what they wanted and would have had to compromise on sizes in a rather small bedroom where storage space is at a premium.

They were surprised that I was able to  say yes to every one of there requests but expressed reservations about the level of finish on our high gloss lacquer. However, we were able to produce a sample that they considered perfect and, as usual we kept back a control sample to ensure that what they get is exactly what they expect.

The only snag proved to be that our genuinely custom made product proved to be a bit more expensive than the off the shelf cabinets that our competitors claim is bespoke.

I have given them my best shot and await their decision, but I doubt that they will get exactly what they want from any other fitted bedroom company for less than Options price.

More later

The word bespoke is often bandied about but can only really be applied to furniture that is individually designed and made for you, this applies to the independent cabinet maker or small businesses like Options but is often incorrectly used by large companies such as Hammonds or Neville Johnson who really make standard size product in a range of fixed sizes with a limited range of door types.  These major companies will modify their standard product or make some individual components but unless the whole thing is individually specified it cannot truly be bespoke.

Having established whether your supplier is really offering custom-made furniture, the next question is “does it have backs”.  This is particularly important with bedroom furniture; see my earlier posts on avoiding mould in wardrobes.

Now find out how substantial the carcasses are, they should be made from 18 mm laminated board, not 15 mm.

If you are looking for an office or home study with bookcases, how are the bookcases built and are they designed to be self supporting rather than hanging off the wall?  Fully laden bookshelves are very heavy and can put excessive strain on an old wall or the lightweight, dry lined walls of a modern home.

Are the bookshelves adjustable. and how robust is the adjustment system? Are they deep enough to take lever arch files or vinyl albums if you have them.

Looking for a home cinema or a living room TV and audio visual unit? Is your fitted furniture manufacturer experienced in these areas? Ask to see pictures of real home installations rather than photographic studio sets. Perhaps you could arrange to visit somebody’s home to see how functional the installations are. Will the cabinet maker be able to work with, or recommend, an expert AV supplier?

Finally, ask about the guarantee. Good quality bespoke furniture should last a lifetime but insist on a minimum 10 year guarantee.  Remember guarantees are only as good as the company that issues them.  Will your supplier still be there in 8 years time? Ask for a proper insurance backed guarantee that will protect your furniture even if the manufacturer has ceased to trade.

An excellent drama highlighting the effects of the recession on three individuals: a city banker, a hardworking family man stuck with a subprime mortgage and the slimy  mortgage broker who sold it to him.

All three characters were shown as stripped down caricatures, the banker high on cocaine and bedroom action, the family man good but niave and the salesman totally amoral and able to apply his self-serving principles to whatever he was selling: sub-prime mortgages before the credit crunch and ethical home improvements after.

The types were all instantly recognizable  and plausible but seeing the salesman telling the lady of an expensive detached house how wonderful her home was and how he was appalled at people’s lack of care for the environment and how ‘I am worried for my children and terrified for my grandchildren’ before launching into a pitch for solar heating panels, rang bells for me.

The home improvement industries, including: double glazing, fitted bedrooms, sliding door wardrobes and all types of supposedly bespoke fitted furniture are riddled with them.  I have worked alongside them and competed with them and the apparent sincerity of their insincerity has amazed me.  Watch out for them because they do exist and for the untrained eye they are very hard to spot. They will offer you a super deal because they really like you and because they think you, and your wonderful home, deserve their product and for those reason they will give you a very special discount.  However, the clincher is that the sale ends tonight and if you want that new fitted office or home cinema you have to say yes now.  there is no time to waste and the price will double tomorrow.

The fact that they are denying you the right to think it over and compare the offerings from their competitors does not concern them.  Decide now or forever lose the deal.

Total nonsense, insist on your right to sleep on it and you will probably seal an even better offer on the same built-in furniture in a week’s time.

In 1978 the labour government under Prime Minister James Callaghan introduced the Sale Of Goods Act that, inter alia, attempted to put a regulatory framework around what you could and could not say about ‘Sale Discounts’. I believe that the rules still say that in order to claim that a price has been reduced you must have offered the same, or an identical item at a higher price for at least 28 days before.

Because the legislation was new and the trading standards officers were keen enforce it, furniture retailers very quickly devised ways of complying with the letter,  if not the spirit of the law. This was particularly easy for multiple retailers such as Times Furnishing and Courts who could simply offer a chest of drawers in their Brighton branch, a wardrobe in Kingston upon Thames and a dressing table in Finchley at a heavily inflated price for the statutory period and the, 28 days later retail them, individually or as a bedroom suite, across all branches at a 50% discount.

Because the markets have changed, it is now very difficult for trading standards officers to apply sanctions.  As I write, Sharps, the UK’s largest supplier of fitted wardobes and bedroom furniture has just started its umpteenth 50% off Summer Sale, replacing the half-price Spring Sale. I think that these lies damage the image of fitted furniture and other home improvement industries.

So, the first thing to establish before ordering a fitted bedroom or a home study from anybody is ‘are they telling you the truth’? Why would you trust anybody who tells you that their furniture is ‘half price’ when it is perfectly obvious that these are there normal prices and that nobody, ever, pays the ‘full price’?

Good, I’m glad I got that off my chest.  More advice on buying home improvements next week.

June fades into July in an endless stream of warm sunny days.  Most of your sales calls are in the cool of the evening when your clients are at home. You can drive out after the rush hour has eased with the hood down on your sports car, if like me you are lucky enough to have one.

So what’s not to like? Not much , I admit.  I sometimes think that I have the perfect summer job, it’s not quite so enjoyable on a cold Novemember evening when you are looking for ‘Treetops’ or ‘The Gables’ on a private road where the houses have unlit name boards at varying heights and angles, some of them impossible to read and quite a few non existant.

Still there is a downside; even in more robust markets for bespoke fitted furniture, most home owners are thinking of barbecues, sunloungers and patio furniture rather than a fitted home office or installing new wardrobes.

So there are fewer client’s to see and the siren cry of a lawn that needs mowing is tempting me away from my computer and the interior design CAD package.

My study is in the loft space and becomes almost uninhabitable at midday during the summer months, so its a couple of hours work designing and dealing with the routine marketing issues after breakfast, a few more hours of follow up phone calls after lunch and then a salad on the patio before setting off to see Mr & Mrs Homeowner about their new bespoke living room furniture when half the population are slumped in front of their TVs trying to recover from the commute from the home counties into London and back.

Now, where did I leave the watering can?