Do you find that when you’re searching for inspiration for your bedroom’s design that you’re often confronted by huge wall–to-wall fitted wardrobes in rooms that seem to have acres of space?
If you’re lucky enough to live in a property with large rooms, this is great, but millions of us have much smaller abodes. In fact, the most recent UK census data shows that almost 5.5 million households live in a flat, apartment or maisonette.
Many such properties are much smaller than houses, which can make choosing the right furniture for any space even more critical. In a room like the bedroom, where storage is likely to be a high priority, it can be difficult to know how best to incorporate this without eating up all of your floor space.
That’s where online wardrobe design can prove invaluable.
The main advantages are that you can build a wardrobe that perfectly fits your space. For example, perhaps your bedroom is quite small but has really high ceilings. When you design your own wardrobe, you can make use of that height.
Or maybe you have odd-shaped alcoves in your walls that will be dead space if you can’t find a piece of furniture to fit into them? Again, designing your own wardrobe allows you to customise your storage solutions to meet your precise needs.
And it’s not only beneficial from the perspective of making the most efficient use of the space available. It also means you can customise the interior of your wardrobe to meet your needs by adding drawers, shoe storage or rails that suit the clothes you wear and therefore need to store.
Most of us want shelving and drawers in our wardrobes, in addition to hanging space. But this may vary depending on the kinds of clothes you like to wear. If you have a beautiful collection of full-length dresses, full-height hanging space will be a greater priority than for someone who predominantly wears jeans and T-shirts, for instance.
Aside from what the wardrobe can hold, it’s important to consider how it looks, especially in a small space where large wardrobes might feel overwhelming. Therefore, choosing a wardrobe with doors that complements or even blends in with the rest of your decor can be important.
Another top tip for smaller rooms is to fit a mirror to your wardrobe doors, as this can make your room feel much larger as well as helping to bounce light around the space.
Glossy finishes on wardrobe doors can have a similar effect in terms of bouncing light around a space too.
The handles on your wardrobe doors will also be important, not only from an aesthetic perspective, but also in terms of how far they extend into the room. You may want to go for flatter handles, for instance, rather than larger knobs if the space around your wardrobe is particularly limited.
When you’re designing your own wardrobe, don’t just look at it from the perspective of conventional spaces. Could you create storage space above your bed? How can you use pockets of space to give you some extra storage and create something of a feature at the same time?
Or could you build in your wardrobe space on either side of your bed, rather than having it along another wall in the room? This could help you create a stylish surround for your bed as well as increase your storage space.
Consider also whether you want to include some open shelving as part of your wardrobe design, to help break up the wardrobes on the wall and provide you with multi-purpose storage.
Ultimately, when you’re designing your own wardrobe there are no right or wrong options. The key is to consider how you want to use your space and what kind of storage you need – and then go from there.
Using our online wardrobe builder is a good way to experiment with how to best include storage in your space. All you need to do is measure up the space (or spaces) that you’d like to use for storage and then pop those measurements into our online tool.
From there, you’ll be presented with a digital mock-up of your space and you can begin adding different types of wardrobe units from our selection. You can customise the colour of the doors and cabinets, as well as choosing your preferred handle and door design.
You’ll see a running total of the amount as you go, which will help you to stay on budget as well as ensure that you’re maximising the space you have available.
