It's the first thing nearly everyone asks me, and it's a fair question. The trouble is the honest answer starts with "it depends", which is no use to anyone trying to budget. So let me actually break it down. Below is what moves the price on a fitted wardrobe, the kind of figures you should expect in and around Nottingham, and why a job that's built to fit your room usually works out better value than a flatpack you wrestle together yourself.
Every job is different, so treat the numbers here as a guide, not a quote. The only way to get a real price is for me to come and measure up. That part is free, and there's no pressure to book.
What actually drives the price
A fitted wardrobe isn't one fixed product, it's a made-to-measure bit of joinery, and a handful of things decide where it lands.
- Size and run. A single alcove unit is a much smaller job than a wall-to-wall run of wardrobes across a whole bedroom. More width, more height, more doors, more cost.
- Alcove vs a full run. Filling a chimney-breast alcove is quick and tidy. Building a run along a straight wall, or wrapping into a corner, means more carcassing, more setting out and more time on site.
- Materials. A painted MDF carcass with shaker doors sits at one price. Real oak, a sprayed finish or soft-close everything sits higher. The doors are usually the part you see and touch most, so that's where money tends to go.
- Internals. Empty boxes with a rail and a shelf are cheap. Once you add drawers, pull-out racks, shoe shelves, dividers and lighting, the inside of the wardrobe becomes a job in itself.
- Doors. Hinged, sliding or open-front all price differently. Sliding doors and made-to-order door fronts cost more than a simple hinged shaker.
- Fit-only or supply-and-fit. If you've already bought a flatpack system and just want it fitted properly, that's labour only. If I'm supplying the materials and building it to measure, the materials are part of the price.
- The room itself. Old houses with bowed walls, sloping floors and skirting in the way take longer to scribe in neatly. A dead-square new-build room is faster.
Rough ranges to budget around
With all that said, here's the honest shape of it for Nottingham. A single alcove wardrobe or a tidy made-to-measure unit tends to start in the high hundreds and runs into the low thousands once you add decent doors and a few drawers. A full wall of fitted wardrobes across a bedroom, properly scribed in with a mix of hanging, shelving and drawers, is usually a few thousand and climbs from there with the finish and the internals you choose.
Fit-only work, where you've bought the units and I install them, is a smaller figure because you're paying for the day or two of labour rather than the materials. If you send me a photo of the space and a rough idea of what you want, I can give you a ballpark over the phone before I ever come out.
Where people get caught out is the cheap online quote that doesn't account for an out-of-square wall or a floor that drops two centimetres across the room. I price the job in front of me, so the number I give you is the number you pay.
Why made-to-measure beats flatpack
Flatpack and modular systems have their place, and for a simple, square space on a tight budget they can do a job. But there's a reason most people who've lived with one end up wanting the real thing next time.
A flatpack unit is built to a standard size, so it almost never fills the space. You get a gap down the side, a filler panel that looks like an afterthought, and a top that stops short of the ceiling collecting dust. A made-to-measure wardrobe is scribed to your actual walls and floor, so it sits tight to the room and looks like it was always there. No gaps, no wasted space, and storage right up to the ceiling if you want it.
It also lasts. Solid carcassing and proper fixings into the wall don't sag or rack the way a screwed-together chipboard kit can after a few years of full hangers. You pay a bit more up front and you stop thinking about it.
If you're weighing up a kitchen or worktops at the same time, it's worth doing the joinery together. I cover both, so the finishes can match and you're not juggling two trades. There's more on the fitted wardrobes and alcoves page, and on worktops if you're sorting those too.
Getting a real price
The quickest way to know what your wardrobes will cost is to have me round to measure up. I'll talk through what you're after, take the room into account, and send you a clear written price with no surprises bolted on later. No charge for the visit and no hard sell.
Have a look through the gallery to see the kind of work I turn out, then send me the details of your room and I'll come back to you, usually the same day.
