Having covered most of the issues relating to your choice of sliding door or hinged door fitted wardrobes in the last five posts I would like, at this stage, to cover some of the minor factors that people still see as key in making the decision.

Without a doubt, sliding wardrobe doors work better on longer walls than they do on short runs of 1200 mm or less and, because of the better access, four door installations upwards of 2000 mm work best. In the bedroom of a typical typical Victorian or Edwardian house in London with two alcoves either side of a chimney breast and high ceilings, sliders not only look out of character but are awkward to access.

Some people think that sliding door wardrobes do not work as well on corner installations but as can been seen in these photos, they give excellent access, particularly if both wings are 12oo mm or wider.

Another common assumption is that sliding door wardrobes do not have backs on them. This is not necessarily true and should be offered as an option by your fitted wardobe supplier. Not having backs can save you money but can prove to be a false economy, particularly if any part of the wardrobe is on an external wall, where I consider backs essential for insulation and to protect your clothes from the risk of mould inducing damp arising from contact with a cold wall.

The issue of backs or no backs also bears on another belief,  held by many, that sliding door wardrobes are easier to install. This may be the case if the wardrobe interior simply consists of shelving and hanging rails fitted directly to the wall. Although, much of the benefit in installation time can be eroded by the need to cut or ’scribe’ each shelf and partition panel to the shape of a plaster wall.

There is a potential cost saving to a sliding door wardrobe being installed without backs or carcasses but as the major cost is in the doors and tracks, the saving may not be as great as imagined.

As we have seen, there are competing arguments for both sliding and hinged door fitted wardrobes. However, it is an irrefutable fact that hinged wardrobe doors offer much more choice in terms of materials, period styles and a far broader range of prices.

Whereas the only reliable type of bespoke sliding door wardrobe consists of a decorative panel, often glass but possibly wood veneered or laminated, encased in an aluminium frame, the options on materials for hinged wardrobe doors range from:

1. Laminate, plain coloured or wood effect on particle board or mdf to provide a competitively priced, minimalist look.
2. Vinyl wrapped mdf doors, machined from a solid panel to create a look that can be simple and modern or more traditional and panelled, again plain or wood effect and with the option of high-gloss (although, in my view, the gloss look is much better on a lacqured door both for finish quality and durability).
3. Foil wrapped mdf made from five or seven seperate pre-wrapped components to give a classic hand-made look with mitred joints. Again wood effect or plain coloured.
4. Solid mdf, flat panel doors with a lacquer, or ‘paint’ finish in a range of stock or bespoke colours wiyh a matt, satin or high-gloss finish.
5. Traditional panelled doors made from mdf in styles ranging from ‘Shaker’ to ‘Raised and Fielded’ and lacquered in matt or satin. These are sometimes hand-finished or ‘distressed’ on site after installation.
6. Real wood veneered doors on an mdf substrate to give a flat minimal look, sometimes with a decorative hardwood edge
7. Finally, at the top of the price range traditional panelled doors as in 5 above but made from real hardwoods including oak, walnut, mahogany, maple, beech, ash, zebrano, cherry, wenge amongst others. Some companies will also offer pine, a softwood, but we feel that quality issues prohibits its use in this case.

The price differentials between the above door types can represent a 100% range in price of a fitted wardrobe installation from a London based company such as Options Fitted Furniture.

We have looked at comparative reliability factors, today we will consider the aeshetic design options of hinged and sliding doors on bespoke fitted wardrobes.

Perhaps the most salient design feature of the contemporary sliding door wardrobes offered by the various companies that specialise in custom-made furniture today is that the doors are almost always surrounded by an aluminium frame.  This is the culmination of years of  experimentation and evolution to overcome the reliability issues associated with sliding wardrobe doors (see last week’s post) and I would urge anybody contemplating having new wardrobes built in to be very cautious about ordering any other type of sliding door.

So; given that, for reasons of cost and reliability, the metal frames are a given, how does this affect the visual aspect of your new bedroom? In one way these doors resemble the the rice paper screens that divide up and provide access to the room spaces in the traditional houses of Japan. The Japanese look is a very popular aspiration in modern bedroom design to which this type of wardrobe is ideally suited. The effect is most readily suited to a black ‘enamel’ finish on the frames and sliding tracks; teamed with soft pastel tinted, obscure glass to give a similar appearance to the rice paper. Incidentally, the look is ‘enamel’ but the finish on the aluminium is achieved by a process know as powder coating; much harder than paint and so well bonded to the metal that, in practical terms, it is virtually indestructible.

However, sliding wardrobe doors are very modern, with or without the Japanese theme, and if used with frames of the naturally silver colour of anodised aluminium, give a very contemporary look that would work well in a London docklands apartment.

 There is of course a far wider range of styles or finishes in hinged doors and I will be looking at those possibilities in my next post.

What about the reliabilty of different types of fitted wardrobe doors?

Sliding door wardrobes do tend to have performance issues attached to them both about the mechanisms breaking down and the perception that they are inclined to come off their tracks. This perception is largely due to the widespread marketing of cheap steel framed sliding doors in the 1980s and ’90s as an affordable but fashionable new type of fitted wardrobe. These wardrobes usually had mirror panels in metal frames that clipped together in the corners and the earlier models were generally ‘top-hung’ in that the rollers were fitted to the top corners and ran un a track suspended from the ceiling. The problems largely arose from the frames coming apart at the corners under the weight of the glass panels, the lightweight roller mechanisms breaking down or the tracks pulling away from the ceiling with the effect that the doors jammed in the bottom tracks. The harrassed user, trying to dress for work would tend to force the jambed door along its track and the whole installation started to disintegrate.

The manufacturers quickly redesigned the sliding door systems to have the rollers at the bottom of the doors and to run in the bottom tracks. This acheived some improvements in the durability of the doors, which now being in compression rather than suspension were less inclined to come apart but introduced a new problem of the doors jumping out of the tracks if they so much as ran over a sock. Also the ball bearing rollers at the bottom of the doors tended to clog with fluff (common enough at the bottom of a wardrobe), with the eventual result that they ceased to revolve and again the door tended to jump or jam.

These steel framed systems are still available as prefabricated doors in the DIY sheds and can be used to make an inexpensive sliding door wardrobe but the reliability issues persist.

Subsequent advances in the design of sliding wardrobe doors using aluminium, rather than steel, frames bolted rather than clipped together at the corners and with a new generation of sealed rollers with built-in anti-jump devices have largely eliminated the reliability issues and modern bespoke fitted furniture with sliding doors are no more likely to suffer from jamming or jumping than a hinged door is likely to come off a wardrobe carcass.

However sliders do have more complex mechanical systems than hinges and the opportunities for failure are therefore greater. Having said that, I recently revisited a development of apartments in Shad Thames, London and was delighted to see that some aluminium framed sliding doors we installed when the block was built almost 20 years ago were still performing well.

Today we have looked at the comparative reliability of sliding or hinged doors. Next week we consider different design options.

More frequently asked questions I get asked about the relative merits of hinged or sliding doors on fitted wardrobes:

‘Does it matter how many sliding doors you have’

Well, obviously this will be partly governed by the overall length of the wardrobe installation. The minimum number of doors is two and I certainly discourage my fitted bedroom customers from having sliding doors on any fitted wardrobe under 1200 mm (4ft) wide, because sliding doors of floor to ceiling height but under 600 mm (2ft) width look ungainly, are harder to keep udjusted and may have a tendency to tilt if they hit an obstruction like a shoe on the track. Good quality, modern sliding wardrobe door systems have built in anti-jump devices fitted to the rollers but even these may not be enough to prevent a tall, thin door from coming off the track.

Sliding wardrobe doors are usually available in widths up to 1200 mm wide which means that with a 25 mm overlap and a build at the ends of over 25 mm a two door wardrobe is fine up to 2400 mm (8ft) wide.

A three door installation can then take you to 3600 mm (12ft) but a disadvantage of a three door set up is that with the usual twin track set up and each door representing one third of the overall width; you will have two thirds of the total opening with plus two 25 mm overlaps on one side of the track; thereby limiting the access to the wardrobe interiors at any position to one third less 50 mm. Also, if the wardrobe is shared by two people, one person will have to wait their turn when accessing the wardrobe at the same time. This issue disappears with a four door arrangement as access is available to half the wardrobe (less 75 mm) and that half can be split in two, thereby allowing each party 25% access to use on their half at will. sliding door wardrobes of over four doors in width are unusual but at five or even six door widths the ability to share the access improves.

Only three door wardrobes tend to lead to domestic disharmony in the mornings but it is an issue worth bearing in mind.

More to come on this topic.

A very common question I get asked is:  ’should our wardrobe doors be hinged or sliding?’

Obviously, there is no ‘one size fits all’ answer, and we offer a bespoke fitted wardrobe service to cover all client needs, however here are some factors to bear in mind and some common myths and misunderstandings:

‘Sliding doors on wardrobes will be cheaper’

Not necessarily. Very cheap sliding wardrobe doors are available from the DIY sheds but the top quality, and reliable, sliding door mechanisms used by bespoke fitted furniture makers are not especially cheap. Also the range of prices is much narrower. At Options Fitted Furniture we have a broad range of finishes on hinged doors which means that the starting price is lower than for sliders but the top end price can be double that.

‘Sliding door wardrobes  save space’

This is a widely stated hypothesis but it is not easily proven.

Firstly, because sliding door wardrobes usually have a double track so that one door passes in front of another with a gap between them, the space taken up by the doors is about 40 mm more than for a hinged door system. Added to this is the factor that hinged doors tend to push the sleeves of garments back into the wardrobe, whereas those sleeves can get caught between two sliding doors or trapped between the door edge and the framework at the ends of a sliding door wardrobe. Therefore, an ideal sliding door installation will be at least 50 mm (two inches) deeper than a hinged door one.

Secondly, In an ideal situation you will allow at least 450 mm (18 inches) of standing space in front of any wardrobe and provided you specify doors that are around 400 mm wide (400 mm or 16 inches is an industry standard for the smallest wardrobe door, although a bespoke fitted bedroom furniture manufacturer will make even smaller doors). In an extremely small room, it might be necessary for the wardrobe to extend almost up to the bed, such that it is only possible to access the wardrobe whilst standing or kneeling on the bed. In this case a sliding door is the only option.

Fitted Wardrobes, where it all started

Back in the early 1980’s, I took my first tentative steps into the fitted furniture business or, more accurately, the fitted bedroom market. My first company was called Berkshire Bedrooms, with a focus on fitted wardrobes and fairly soon I teamed up with a business partner and launched Wispaglide Wardrobes. Silly name but indicative of our focus on sliding door wardrobes.

We soon added a range of bi-folding wardrobe doors to the mix and spent several years making and installing just fitted wardrobes before morphing into Options Furniture, taking on a graduate furniture designer (he’s still with us and is now the managing director) and developing the most comprehensive range of bespoke fitted furniture for bedrooms, living rooms, home cinemas, home studies and home offices in the UK.

But still in spite of our current diversity and experience in the domestic and commercial sectors with fitting out projects and reception desks, wardrobes still account for over 50% of our production and deep down, they are in our corporate blood.

We still do sliding doors and bi-fold doors, although the systems we use now have developed by leaps and bounds and offer unrivalled levels of durability (to which we now attach a 10 year guarantee) but the vast majority of the wardrobes we make are now of the hinged door type. Even these have literally thousands of permutations with doors up to 2.6 metres high and full height or doors split into two or more sections.

Our wardrobe doors are made from mdf, lacquered in a choice of thousands of colours and finishes ranging from matt through satin to high gloss or wrapped in vinyl or foil wood effects, or laminates in dozens of faux wood effects. Or, alternatively, from almost any hardwood, either solid or veneered.

We have come a long way but basically we are fitted wardrobe people at heart.

Fitted Wardrobes – where it all started.

The lounge, the sitting room, the parlour, the family room, the tv room, reception room; all names for the room in the house where we entertain guests or gather together to chat, read or watch TV. some people might be lucky enough to have seperate rooms for all of the above and would not therefore require a name specifically for the room they live in but for most people a living room is the minimum requirement, perhaps augmented by a dining room.

Growing up in the 1950s it was always the living room in our house and I had thought the term had probably gone out of fashion in favour of specific appellations like home cinema  or AV room. I was therefore surprised on checking the Options Furniture website statistics to discover that, along with kid’s rooms and children’s bedrooms, living room furniture and variations thereon was the most popular search term in August.

Certainly, we have seen a rise in enquiries and orders for bespoke fitted living room furniture this year. What is interesting is the broad variety of types of fitted furniture we are making for living rooms, ranging from ornate classical designs, through Arts and Crafts to austere, minimalist installations:

the range of specific component parts, such as drinks cabinets (used to be called cocktail cabinets), crockery cupboards, cutlery drawers, Hi Fi cabinets and housings for Sky boxes, free-view boxes and recorders, and the range of names that people give to this emerging market trend: Home-Cinemas, TV wall units, AV or Audio Visual cabinets, dressers.

The strengths of a truly bespoke furniture maker really come into play in this diverse and nascent market.  Fitted bedroom furniture is still the larger market but it only has a handful of basic component parts.  Of course there are endless permutations and many ranges of design and finish but 90% of the spend goes on wardrobes, chests of drawers and cabinets in one form or another and, up to a point, suppliers can, and do, get away with using standard size components and describing the product as bespoke or custom-made.

However, and in my experience, most fitted living room units are one-off designs resulting from a collaboration between the customer and the designer to produce a product that is truly unique.

Your living room should be anything you wish it to be and so should the furniture.

Like most home improvement businesses, the fitted furniture industry is subject to trends and fashions. The difficult trick for bespoke furniture manufacturers is spotting the trend and staying ahead of the curve.

Unlike the clothing inside your fitted wardrobes, the cabinetry is expected to last for decades and should come with a ten-year guarantee at the very least. The problem for the consumer is finding a range of bedroom or living room furniture that pleases today’s aeshetic but will not look dated in five years time.

What is ‘classic’, ‘traditional’, ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’ is a subjective choice and whatever style you choose for your built-in furniture has to please you now without the propensity to look dated the next time you redecorate.

In my view, an excellent choice is plain, flat, minimalist doors in, high-gloss finish. This is a very modern look but does not offend in an older style house and has the added benefit of making rooms look bigger, is low maintainence and does not tie you into any particular style of decoration; use it with plain walls to create an open spacious effect or try it with a bold patterned wallpaper for dramatic impact.

High-gloss works well in fitted bedrooms, living rooms and on audio visual units and can be used to create a stunning contemporary home office.

High-gloss fitted furniture has been around for over decades so it looks as if it is here to stay, is not just a fashion trend and will, no doubt, still look up to date when the guarantee has long expired.

The earliest examples of high-gloss furniture were pioneered by a company called Meredew back in the 1960s and used a tough polyester finish over both light and dark wood veneers. The finish was applied using a ‘curtain-coating method in which the doors and panels were passed through a ‘waterfall’ or ‘curtain’ that poured the polyester lacquer in a technologically controlled stream that was so even that you could hardly see it moving. The whole process required a dust-free, environment and was very expensive to maintain. This process was only economical for mass production runs and did not lend itself to bespoke manufacture.

later developments in automotive finishes, using acid-caltalysed, hand sprayed lacquers have transfered into furniture manufacture and allow much greater flexibility in small batch production. It is now possible to offer a virtually unlimited range of colours and apply high-gloss to both plain mdf and wood veneers. The gloss is obtained by hand-polishing with ‘cutting pastes’, again a motor industry development.

Other types of high-gloss finish such as solid acrylics are available but are often prohibitively expensive and not as hard or scratch resistant.

At Options Furniture we have achieved some stunning high-gloss effects by spraying lacquer onto the back of glass before fixing it to the furniture; this offers the same wide choice of colours with high durability but is still expensive.

There are also some vinyl-wrapped high-gloss finishes around but the nature of vynils renders them soft and easily scratched or damaged. Also, the vinyl finish tends to dull down in a very short time and the  look is very plastic.

The latest breakthrough in high-gloss finishes has now arrived and looks very exciting; high gloss laminates. Early attempts at using high-gloss laminate on chipboard substrates were not very successful because the inherently course surface of particle board showed through the surface of the quite thin laminates. However, the second generation of  high-gloss laminates, in both wood effects and solid colours, on mdf are setting a new standard in finish quality, is tough enough for a fitted home office or study and seems set to establish the fitted furniture look for this decade.

Ask your bespoke fitted furniture designer about the new possibilities in high-gloss laminated fitted furniture.

To recap on the merits of the bespoke cabinet making company vis-a-vis a carpenter:

Carpenter: Price; an independent tradesman, with low overheads, should always be cheaper than a fitted furniture company.

Bespoke Fitted Furniture Company: Design Service, Product Quality, Showroom Facility, Guarantee, Testimonials, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Project Management. That’s seven good reasons for spending more and going to the experts. That’s not to say that the carpenter cannot offer any of these benefits but he is unlikely to offer all of them. To read them all, start with my post of 7th July.

And the eighth? After Sales Service.

No matter that the ordering process includes measuring the job four times and that you have received a set of technical drawings, samples and a detailed finish schedule, everybody in the team is an experienced professional and the process has been revised over many years and tested to destruction. Murphy’s law says that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong: A component gets damaged, the paint manufacturer sends in the wrong colour lacquer, a dimension is misread and not picked up. Every snag is unique in some way, otherwise a recurring problem should have been designed out of the system but try as they will to provide the perfect product, customer expectations are as varied as the customers and human errors do occur.

No manufacturer, in any industry, is perfect;  it’s not necessarily what goes wrong but how the supplier reacts when it does that matters. Business relationships are not always built on getting it right first time every time but often on putting it right promptly and with minimum fuss.

The independent tradesman, who may have moved on to his next installation by the time you find a problem and may not be able to be as responsive as you would like. Also, it is human nature to react by defending your own workmanship. This is not always compatible with good customer service practice.

When an individual has designed, made and installed the your new fitted bedroom or home entertainment units it can become very personal if you need to report a problem, and with no designer, draftsman or surveyor to blame he may struggle to rise above his own error and give the correct customer service response, which is always: How can I put this right and restore the goodwill?

Also, it is often easier for the customer to report a problem to the administrator responsible for customer service than to confront the individual who made the error directly. If the design, drafting, surveying, manufacturing and installation functions all reside in one person, somebody who has worked in your home for a week or more and who you have plied with tea and biscuits, who else can you complain to and expect a constructive and pragmatic resolution?