Most of the bedrooms we see in Cardiff were not built with wardrobes in mind. They were built a hundred years ago for a bed, a washstand and not much else, or more recently to a size that fits a plan rather than the people living in it. Either way, the storage you need has to be found, and it is usually hiding in the bits of the room nobody uses.
Alcoves and chimney breasts
The Victorian and Edwardian terraces around Canton, Roath and Grangetown nearly all have a chimney breast in the main bedroom, with an alcove either side. A freestanding wardrobe never fits those alcoves properly, so they end up holding a chair and a pile of clothes. A run made to measure can fill both alcoves, or carry straight across the chimney breast, so the wall becomes storage from one side to the other.
When the bay window takes the long wall
In a lot of these houses the bay window takes up the only long wall, which leaves the wardrobe fighting the door and the bed for what is left. Sliding doors help here more than anything, because they do not need floor space to open. A run along a shorter wall, built floor to ceiling, often holds more than a wider wardrobe that stops halfway up.
Box rooms over the stairs
The box room usually has a bulkhead where the stairs come up underneath it. Off-the-shelf furniture cannot work round that, so the space gets written off. Because we measure every room and build to it, the step in the floor becomes part of the design, not a reason to give up on the room.
High ceilings
Older Cardiff houses often have high ceilings, and a shop-bought wardrobe in one leaves two feet of nothing above it. That is space you are already paying to heat. A run built right up to the ceiling turns it into somewhere for suitcases, spare bedding and the things you only need twice a year.
Got an alcove, a bay or a bulkhead you do not know what to do with? Book a free design visit and we will measure it and show you what fits.
The inside is where the space really is
A single hanging rail leaves about a metre of dead air underneath the clothes. Put a second rail in that gap and the same width holds twice as much, without the wardrobe getting any bigger. Add drawers and shelves where they are useful and you can often lose the chest of drawers altogether. Our bespoke internal storage page shows how the inside can be laid out.
Newer houses around the Bay and Pontprennau
The newer houses around Cardiff Bay and Pontprennau are a different job. The rooms are square and the ceilings are lower, so there are fewer awkward corners to fill but less room overall. This is where mirror sliding doors make the most difference. A full wall of mirror makes a compact room feel bigger and lighter, and nothing opens out into the space you have.
Every wardrobe is made to measure in our own workshop, with sliding wardrobes from £799. You can see photos of rooms we have fitted on our fitted wardrobes in Cardiff page.