Cheap fitted wardrobes, and where the price actually goes

Summary: Cheap fitted wardrobes are not about using bad hardware. They are about cutting showroom, survey, and fitting overhead while keeping the hinges, runners, carcass material, and rail good enough to last.

The first quote I ever got for a fitted wardrobe was 6,800 euros. The wall was 2.6 m wide, the ceiling was about 2.55 m, and the alcove was deeper than usual at roughly 60 cm. The carpenter spent forty minutes on the measure and emailed the quote three days later. I read it twice. Then I closed the email and bought a free-standing PAX from IKEA for 480 euros and lived with the 20 cm gap on one side for two years.

That's the usual story with fitted wardrobes. The "fitted" version is four to ten times the IKEA version, and most people quietly walk away. The thing is, it doesn't actually have to be that much more. It depends almost entirely on which costs you're paying and which you're not.

Here's how the price breaks down, and where to push.

What you're actually paying for

A typical UK fitted wardrobe quote from a high-street brand (Sharps, Hammonds, the John Lewis fitted ranges) for a 2 m wide by 2.4 m tall single-wall wardrobe lands somewhere between 4,000 and 9,000 pounds. The materials in that wardrobe, as panels, are about 600 to 900 pounds. Sometimes less. So the markup over materials is 4x to 10x.

Where does it go? Roughly:

• Showroom rent and the salesperson's commission: 25 to 35 per cent of the quote.
• The home survey, design draft, and CAD work: 10 to 15 per cent.
• Fitting labour, two installers for a day: 8 to 12 per cent.
• Materials including the carcass, doors, hinges, and runners: 15 to 25 per cent.
• Margin: whatever's left, usually 20 to 30 per cent.

If you can cut the showroom and the survey out, the price almost halves. If you can fit it yourself (or get a handyman to spend a few hours on it), you knock another 8 to 12 per cent off. So the question isn't really "are fitted wardrobes expensive". It's "which parts of this 4x markup am I willing to do without."

What never to compromise on

Some costs look optional and aren't. Cut these and you'll regret it within two years.

• Hinges. Blum or Hettich soft-close hinges cost about 4 euros each. The no-name versions from a generic supplier cost 80 cents. The cheap ones sag and fail to close fully within a year, and replacing them later is fiddly. Spend the 6 euros per door and forget about it.
• Drawer runners. Same story. Full-extension ball-bearing runners (Blum Tandem or equivalent) cost about 18 euros a pair. Cheap epoxy-coated ones cost 4. The cheap ones bind, then sag, then drop the drawer onto your foot in year three.
• Carcass material. 18 mm MFC (melamine-faced chipboard) from a known European mill is fine for the inside of a wardrobe and saves a lot over plywood. But MDF as a structural panel is a mistake; it sags under shelf load.
• Hanging rail. The rail itself is two euros. A solid steel one is three. Don't buy the chrome-plated plastic one that ships with budget kits. It bows the first time you hang a winter coat collection on it.

You can be cheap on a lot of things. Not these four.

Where to actually save

This is the useful list.

• Skip the showroom. Half the brands listed above charge what they charge because they have a high street presence. A workshop-only joiner with a website and a portfolio will quote 30 to 50 per cent less for the same thing. Look on local builders' forums, ask in neighbourhood groups, get three quotes.
• Standard depth, custom width. Most fitted wardrobes are 60 cm deep because that's the depth a coat hanger needs. Asking for a non-standard depth (say 58 cm because that's what your alcove gives you) costs nothing extra. Asking for a non-standard internal layout costs a lot. Stick with one rail, one shelf above, drawers below, simple.
• Plain doors. A flat slab door in a single colour is the cheapest door type to make and the easiest to fit. Shaker doors, beaded panels, mirrored doors, and especially curved doors all add 50 to 200 per cent to the door cost.
• Sliding doors only when you need them. Sliding doors look cheaper because they hide the carcass. They aren't. The track and gear add about 200 euros per metre to the price. Hinged doors are cheaper unless the room genuinely can't fit them.
• Internal storage upgrades. Pull-out trouser racks, tie organisers, internal lighting strips, soft-close drawer dampers, all of it adds up fast and most of it goes unused. A rail, a shelf, and three drawers handles 90 per cent of what people actually wear.

The DIY route, honestly

A lot of cost guides skip past this because they're trying to sell you a service. Cutting your own panels from a flat 18 mm MFC sheet at the local timber yard, assembling them yourself, fitting them into an alcove, costs maybe 350 to 500 euros for a 2 m wide wardrobe, plus a weekend of your time and the patience to scribe a panel against an out-of-square wall.

You'll need: a circular saw with a guide rail (or a track saw, hire one for 40 euros for a day), a drill, a level, edge banding tape, an iron, and a working knowledge of how to drill a 35 mm hinge cup. None of that is hard. All of it has a learning curve, and the first wardrobe you build solo will take three times as long as the second.

The middle path: pre-cut panels delivered ready to assemble. You skip the saw, the dust, and the learning curve, but keep the labour saving. This is what flat-pack-but-actually-fitted means. Panels arrive cut to your wall, edge-banded, with the holes already drilled, and you put it together with a screwdriver and a spirit level in an afternoon.

What "cheap" should actually cost

For a 2 m wide, 2.4 m tall, 60 cm deep fitted wardrobe with two hinged doors, internal hanging rail, one shelf, three drawers, and a sensible spec:

• Full-service big brand: 4,000 to 9,000 pounds.
• Local joiner, custom-built: 2,200 to 3,500 pounds.
• Pre-cut panels, you assemble: 700 to 1,200 pounds.
• DIY from raw sheet at the timber yard: 350 to 500 pounds plus your weekend.

Cheap built in wardrobes don't have to mean bad ones. They mean cutting the showroom, the salesperson, and the install crew, and keeping the spend on the bits that matter (the hinges, the runners, the carcass material, the rail).

If you've measured an awkward alcove and the high street quote has made you close the email and look at PAX again, the pre-cut-panels-shipped-to-your-door route is what we built knuslabs.com to handle.

If you're planning the same kind of project, start with fitted wardrobe concepts for exact spaces or compare it with built-in closet concepts. For adjacent planning detail, read What Sharps wardrobes actually cost (and why) and Shaker fitted wardrobes, and the tiny rules that make them look right.