To assemble a wardrobe you lay the panels out flat, fit the dowels and cam bolts into the pre drilled holes, join the sides to the top and base to form the carcass, check the box is square, fix the back panel, then stand the wardrobe upright and add shelves, rails and doors. The order matters more than anything else: the back panel goes on while the carcass is still flat and still adjustable, because that panel is what locks the wardrobe square for the rest of its life.
Most assembly problems trace back to skipping that squaring step or standing the wardrobe up too early. Get the sequence right and everything afterwards, including the doors, falls into place with much less adjustment.
Clear the room first. You need roughly the footprint of the wardrobe lying flat, plus space to walk around it. In a typical British bedroom that usually means moving the bed out to the landing for a couple of hours. It feels like an unnecessary step and it is the single thing that most reduces the total time.
Put down protection. The flattened cardboard from the packaging works perfectly and costs nothing. It stops the panel faces picking up grit from the floor and stops the floor picking up scratches from panel corners.
Check the contents against the parts list before you start. Count the panels, count the fixings, and confirm nothing is damaged along an edge. Finding a missing cam bolt at step three is a minor inconvenience. Finding it at step eleven, with the carcass half built in the middle of the room, is not.
Sort the fixings into groups. A muffin tin, an egg box or a sheet of paper with labelled areas all work. Flat pack fixings include several items that look almost identical at a glance, and mixing up a 15mm and a 20mm screw can push a screw point through a visible face.
The supplied allen key will complete the job, but a few additions make a noticeable difference.
A cordless screwdriver with an adjustable torque setting speeds up cam screws and hinge plates substantially. Keep the torque low. Chipboard threads strip easily, and once a cam screw has stripped its hole the fix is fiddly.
A rubber mallet seats dowels without bruising the panel faces. A hammer with a folded cloth over the head works too.
A tape measure and a spirit level are needed for squaring and levelling. A Phillips screwdriver handles hinge adjustment, which is easier by hand than with a driver.
Lastly, keep the instruction sheet somewhere you can see it rather than under a panel. Sounds obvious. Happens constantly.
Lay everything out face down and identify each piece before joining anything. Side panels are often mirror images, with pre drilled holes on one face only. Fitting the left panel on the right means the holes end up on the outside, and you will have to dismantle back to that point to correct it.
Look for the pattern of pre drilled holes. The face with many small holes for shelf pins and hinge plates is the inside face. The face with none is the outside face. On melamine wardrobes, the finished edge with the visible edging tape is usually the front edge.
Mark the panels lightly with a pencil on the inside face if it helps: L for left, R for right, T for top. Pencil on the inside face is invisible once the wardrobe is built.
Fit the wooden dowels into their holes first, tapping them home with a mallet so they sit half in and half out. Then fit the cam bolts, which are the metal posts that screw into small threaded inserts. Screw them in until the shoulder is tight against the panel, and make sure the flat side of the head faces the direction the cam will come from. Getting that orientation wrong means the cam cannot grip.
Join the top and base to one side panel first. Line up the dowels and cam bolts with their holes, push the panels together, then insert the cams into their round housings and turn them clockwise until they lock. Half a turn is usually enough. Over turning a cam does not make it tighter, it just risks cracking the housing.
Now add the second side panel. This is where a second person helps, because you are aligning several dowels and cam bolts at once on a large panel. If you are working alone, prop the assembly against something solid so it cannot tip while you locate the holes.
Do not fully tighten everything yet. Leave the cams engaged but not fully locked, so the carcass still has a little movement. You need that movement for the next step.
This is the step that determines whether the doors will ever line up properly.
Measure the diagonal from one corner of the carcass to the opposite corner. Then measure the other diagonal. If both figures match, the box is square. If they differ, push gently on the longer diagonal until they equalise.
Do this on a flat surface. Building on an uneven floor and squaring the diagonals still leaves you with a twist. If the bedroom floor is noticeably uneven, assemble on the flattest available surface, even if that means the landing.
Once the diagonals match, tighten the cams fully. Then fix the back panel immediately.
The back panel is thin, usually 3mm to 6mm, and it contributes almost nothing to load bearing. What it does is stop the carcass racking, which is the twisting movement that eventually makes doors sit crooked.
Some designs slide the back into a groove in the side panels, in which case it must go in during carcass assembly rather than after. Check the instructions for this, because it is a common point of confusion and it means dismantling if missed.
Where the back sits on the rear edges, lay it in position and check the panel edges align with the carcass edges. Pin or screw it around all four sides at roughly 100mm to 150mm spacing. Where there is an internal divider or fixed shelf, drive a few fixings into that too: it stiffens the whole structure noticeably.
Stand the wardrobe upright with help. A tall carcass is unwieldy rather than heavy, and the risk is a corner catching a wall or a ceiling light on the way up.
Once vertical, move it close to its final position and level it. Adjust the feet if it has them, or pack under the base with thin timber or plastic shims. Check level side to side and front to back. Ten minutes here saves months of doors drifting out of alignment.
Fit the anti tip bracket if one is supplied. It screws to the back of the wardrobe and to the wall behind, and it is genuinely important in a household with children. Fix it into a stud or use a proper cavity fixing, not a plasterboard plug alone.
With the wardrobe upright and level, fit the shelves. Shelf pins or supports go into the pre drilled holes in the side panels, and it is worth measuring rather than counting holes: it is easy to be one hole out on one side, and a sloping shelf is very visible.
The hanging rail sits in sockets screwed to the side panels or to a fixed shelf underside. Position the rail 50mm to 60mm forward of the back so hangers do not catch. On spans over 1000mm, fit the centre support bracket if one is supplied. Without it, a rail loaded with winter coats will sag permanently.
If the wardrobe includes internal drawers, they are the slowest part. Each drawer assembles as a small box, then the runners screw to the carcass sides and to the drawer sides. Fit the runners before the drawer boxes, and check they are level and at matching heights on both sides. A drawer that catches almost always means one runner is slightly out.
Hinge plates screw to the inside face of the carcass at the pre drilled positions. The hinge cups are usually already fitted to the doors on a flat pack wardrobe, which saves the awkward part of the job.
Support the door as you clip or screw each hinge arm onto its plate. Hanging the door’s weight off a single engaged hinge while fitting the next is how plate screws get pulled loose in chipboard.
Then adjust. Each hinge has screws for side to side and depth, and the plate often adjusts for height. Set the height first so the door bottom aligns with the carcass base, then the side to side so the vertical gap is even along the whole edge, then the depth so the door face sits flush.
Aim for a consistent gap of 2mm to 3mm. The exact figure matters less than consistency: an even 4mm gap looks deliberate, while a gap tapering from 1mm to 5mm looks like a fault.
On a pair of doors, adjust each one to the carcass first, then to each other. Doing both at once is a frustrating way to spend twenty minutes.
Sliding doors work differently. They engage in the top track first, then the bottom guides drop into the floor channel, and adjuster screws at the base of each door bring it plumb. If you are choosing between the two mechanisms, our modern sliding wardrobes UK sale range suits narrow rooms where a swinging door would foul the bed, while hinged designs give you full access to the interior at once.
Standing the wardrobe up before fixing the back panel is the most common, and it means squaring the carcass while it is upright and awkward.
Over tightening cams cracks the housing and leaves a joint that will never fully tighten. Half a turn until firm is enough.
Fitting a side panel the wrong way round is easy to do and requires dismantling to fix, which is why identifying panels before starting is worth the five minutes.
Skipping the levelling stage causes doors to drift over time. A wardrobe standing on an uneven floor is slowly being twisted by its own weight.
Loading the wardrobe immediately after building it is worth resisting for an hour or so, particularly if any glue was used, and it also gives you the chance to check the doors still sit right once the carcass has settled.
If assembly is a genuine concern, some designs are simply more forgiving. Fewer, larger doors mean fewer hinges to align. Wardrobes without internal drawers go together considerably faster. Units with adjustable feet are easier to level than those sitting directly on a plinth.
Our modern wardrobes UK sale range spans single door units through to larger family sizes, so you can match the complexity to the space and to how much time you want to spend. For a smaller second bedroom, modern 2 door wardrobes UK are usually a straightforward afternoon.
If you are building more than one piece, a coordinated range has a practical advantage beyond the matching finish: the construction methods repeat, so the second and third pieces go together faster. At Furniture in Fashion you can shop modern furniture UK across full bedroom collections, and adding a matching modern bedside cabinets UK sale pair at the same time means the whole room arrives together with free delivery to most UK mainland postcodes.
Lay out and identify the panels, fit dowels and cam bolts, join the sides to the top and base, check both diagonals for square, fix the back panel, then stand it up, level it, and add shelves, rails and doors.
Lying down. The carcass is far easier to square while flat, and the back panel needs to be fixed before the wardrobe is stood up.
Usually the carcass is not square or the wardrobe is not level. Check both diagonals of the carcass and level the base before spending time on hinge adjustment.
Turn each cam clockwise until it feels firm, which is normally around half a turn. Forcing it further risks cracking the housing and does not improve the joint.
For a single or two door unit, one person can manage. For taller three, four or six door wardrobes the panels are large and awkward, so a second person saves significant time and reduces the risk of damage.
Making your own wardrobe can take three quite different forms, and choosing the right one…
Sliding door wardrobe prices in the UK fall into three brackets: ready made freestanding units…
Wardrobe smells come from three things acting together: moisture, still air and worn clothing in…
Bar stools can often be shortened, but only some types, and telling them apart is…
Cut down your wardrobe by emptying it completely, sorting by category rather than by shelf,…
Building a built in wardrobe follows a fixed order, and the two stages that decide…
This website uses cookies.