No. 01 · Fitted wardrobes
Four-door fitted wardrobe in sage
A floor-to-ceiling wardrobe scribed into an uneven wall and hand-painted in soft sage.
The job
- Discipline
- Fitted wardrobes
- Where
- Surrey, UK
- Guide range
- £2,200 – £4,200 · painted double wardrobe, hanging and shelving
- Photographs
- 3 of the finished job
Materials
- Poplar frames
- Tongue-and-groove panelled doors
- Hand-painted finish
Bedroom · Hand-painted · Scribed to the room · Floor to ceiling
Or talk it through first. No obligation either way.
The brief
A wall that was neither plumb nor straight, and four doors that had to line up anyway.
A bedroom with a full wall of dead space and nowhere to hang anything. The client wanted storage that looked like it had always been part of the house rather than something bought and pushed against a wall.
What we did about it
Built as four framed doors in two banks, carried right up to the ceiling so there is no dust shelf and no visual gap. The carcass is scribed to the wall and the floor, neither of which was straight, and the whole thing was hand-painted on site so the finish runs continuous across every face.
Five decisions you cannot see in the photograph.
These are the parts nobody asks about at the quote stage and everybody notices ten years later.
Scribed, not packed out and trimmed over
The quick way to fit against a bowed wall is to hold the unit plumb, leave the gap and cover it with a strip of moulding. It works, and you can see it for the rest of the time you live there. Here each carcass side was scribed to follow the wall, so the joint closes on itself and the front of the wardrobe is square even though nothing behind it is.
Carried to the ceiling on purpose
Stopping short of the ceiling saves the awkward scribe along the top and leaves you a shelf that collects dust, a shadow line you notice from the bed, and a wardrobe that reads as furniture. Running the frame right up costs the best part of a day. It is the difference between fitted and delivered.
Four doors, but the eye reads the gaps
On a run this size nobody looks at the doors, they look at the lines between them. The shadow gaps are set to a single dimension across all four, and the hinges were adjusted again after the last coat had gone off, because paint film is thick enough to close a gap that was right before it.
Painted in place, so the finish has no join
Spraying off site gives a harder surface, but the pieces then have to be carried through a finished house and every scribe fillet is painted separately. Hand-painting in situ runs one continuous finish across frame, door and fillet, and it can be flatted back and touched up years later with a brush rather than a booking.
Poplar for the frames rather than MDF
Poplar is stable, takes a hand-painted finish without the fur you get on a cut MDF edge, and holds a hinge screw properly. It costs more per metre than the sheet alternative and it is the reason the door edges still feel crisp under three coats.
The rest of the job, uncropped.
Shot on the day we finished, in the light that was there. Nothing has been staged, styled or straightened afterwards.
From the doorway the run reads as one plane, not four doors. 
Shaker frames with a tongue-and-groove infill.
Specification
What it is actually made of.
If you are holding two quotes for work like this, compare them here rather than on the total. The difference between a number and a much lower number is almost always in this list.
- Door frames
- Poplar, machined and assembled in the workshop
- Door infill
- Tongue-and-groove boarding within a shaker frame
- Carcass
- Painted MDF, scribed to wall, floor and ceiling
- Ironmongery
- Soft-close concealed hinges, turned knobs
- Finish
- Hand-painted on site, soft sage, three coats over primer
- Fixing
- Back-fixed into studs and noggins, never into plasterboard alone
Why it lasts
Nothing here is glued to the wall and nothing depends on a proprietary part. In ten years the finish can be flatted back and repainted a different colour over a weekend, which is the one thing a painted timber wardrobe does that a wrapped or sprayed unit cannot.
Roughly what work like this runs to.
Not one of the sixteen Surrey competitors we profiled publishes a price. These are guide ranges for this kind of job, so you can decide whether to call before you call.
- Painted double wardrobe, hanging and shelving
- £2,200 – £4,200
- Full wall run, 3m, painted, mixed interior
- £3,600 – £7,200
- Per linear metre, guide
- £1,200 – £2,400
Indicative 2026 figures for Surrey, including materials and fitting. A guide, not a quote. Your quote is fixed, in writing, and comes after we have measured. All guide prices.
Asked most about fitted wardrobes.
- How long does a fitted wardrobe take?
- The fitting itself is usually the short part; most of the elapsed time is making. Hand-painting adds a day or two on site because each coat has to dry properly before the next goes on, and doors are re-adjusted after the paint has cured.
- Can you build around a chimney breast or a sloping ceiling?
- Yes. That is usually the reason people call rather than buying something off the shelf. Awkward geometry is where a made-to-measure wardrobe earns its money — a sloped ceiling in particular is almost impossible to buy a solution for.
- Do you paint on site or in a workshop?
- Both, depending on the finish. Hand-painting on site gives a continuous finish across the whole run and is easy to touch up in five years. Spraying off site gives a harder, more uniform surface but means more pieces coming through the house and no easy touch-up later.
More on how this work is done, and what changes the price, on the fitted wardrobes page.
Keep going
Tell us what you are trying to fit, and where it has to go.
Four quick questions, no essay and no obligation. We will come and measure, and you will have a drawing and a fixed price within a week.
Every enquiry answered within one working day.