Building a wardrobe from MDF means cutting a five sided carcass, joining it with glue and screws or dowels, adding a rail and shelves, then fitting doors on concealed hinges. Use 18mm MDF for the sides, top, base and shelves, and 6mm to 9mm for the back panel. A typical single wardrobe is around 900mm wide, 600mm deep and 1800mm to 2000mm tall. The work divides into three stages: accurate cutting, square assembly and door alignment. Accuracy in the first stage makes the other two straightforward.
Start from the inside out. Clothes need roughly 580mm to 600mm of internal depth to hang front to back on standard hangers, which sets the external depth at around 620mm once you account for the back panel and door thickness. Anything shallower forces a side facing rail, which holds far less.
Height is a matter of ceiling clearance and honesty about reach. A rail at 1750mm above the floor is comfortable for most adults, and long items such as coats and dresses need 1500mm to 1600mm of clear hanging height beneath the rail. Adding shelving above the rail is a good use of the remaining space, and building slightly short of the ceiling makes the unit far easier to stand up in the room.
Width depends on your rail requirement. Measure your existing hanging clothes pushed together, add a fifth for breathing space, and build to that. Spans over 900mm need a central divider so shelves and the rail do not sag.
Draw a cutting list before buying anything. Remember that the top and base sit either between or over the sides, and that choice changes their length by twice the board thickness. Getting this wrong is the most common cutting list mistake.
Standard MDF is fine for a bedroom. Moisture resistant MDF is worth the extra only if the room has known damp issues. Sheets come in 2440mm by 1220mm, so plan your cuts to work with that, and consider having the sheet cut down at the merchant, as a full sheet is heavy and awkward to handle alone.
Cut with a fine toothed blade and support the board along its length. MDF cuts cleanly but dulls blades quickly and produces very fine dust, so wear a proper dust mask rather than a cloth one and work outdoors or in a ventilated space with the extraction running.
Check each piece against your list as you cut and mark it. Cutting all pieces before assembly is quicker than cutting as you go, and it lets you check that opposite pieces match exactly. Two sides differing by 2mm will show as a twisted carcass and misaligned doors.
MDF holds screws well in its faces but splits easily when screwed into its edges, so pilot holes are essential. Drill a pilot slightly narrower than the screw thread and use screws designed for board rather than general woodscrews, which have coarser threads that force the fibres apart.
Glue and screw is the simplest joint. Apply wood glue to the mating edge, clamp the pieces, drill and countersink pilot holes, then drive the screws. Dowels or cam and dowel fittings give a cleaner face with no visible screw heads, at the cost of more precise marking. Both are strong enough for a domestic wardrobe.
Assemble the sides to the top and base first, forming a rectangle, then check for square by measuring both diagonals. If the two diagonals match, the frame is square. Adjust until they do, then fit the back panel, which is what locks the carcass square permanently. Screw or pin the back around all four edges rather than just the corners.
Sand the assembled carcass before it goes upright. It is much easier to reach every surface while it is lying flat.
Fit the hanging rail on end sockets screwed into the sides, or on a timber batten if you prefer. Set it around 50mm to 60mm forward of the back panel so hangers hang clear, and allow 40mm to 50mm of clearance above so hangers can be lifted off.
Shelves rest on battens screwed to the sides. Mark shelf heights, check them level with a spirit level, then fix a 25mm by 25mm batten to each side. Cut each shelf 2mm to 3mm narrower than the internal width so it drops in without forcing the sides apart. For shelves over 800mm wide, add a batten across the back to support the rear edge.
Plan the interior around what you own. Full height hanging for coats and dresses, double hanging for shirts and folded trousers, and a bank of shelves for knitwear covers most needs. If it turns out you need more folded storage than hanging, a separate chest of drawers UK sale unit is easier than building drawers into a first project, since drawer runners demand a level of precision that catches out most beginners.
Doors are the fussiest part. Cut them to overlay the carcass front, leaving a consistent 2mm to 3mm gap between a pair of doors. Concealed hinges need a 35mm cup recess drilled into the back of the door, which really does need a 35mm Forstner bit in a drill press or a jig. Freehand drilling that recess rarely produces a hinge that sits square.
Two hinges suit doors up to about 1200mm tall, three up to 1800mm, and four beyond that. Position them roughly 100mm from the top and bottom with the rest spaced evenly between.
Once hung, adjust each hinge to even the gaps. The screw nearest the door moves it sideways, the mounting plate handles height, and the rear screw sets depth. Work in quarter turns and check after each one.
If drilling hinge cups and matching door gaps sounds like more precision than you want to take on, that is a fair conclusion. Doors are where most self build wardrobes lose their finish, and comparing the result against a factory built unit from our modern wardrobes UK sale range is a reasonable sanity check before you commit a weekend to it.
MDF faces take paint well, but the cut edges are absorbent and will look fuzzy unless they are sealed. Prime the edges, let them dry, sand lightly with 240 grit, then prime again. Two or three cycles gives a smooth edge that matches the faces.
Use an MDF or acrylic primer, then two thin topcoats of water based satin or eggshell furniture paint. Thin coats sanded lightly between are the route to a flat finish. Full gloss magnifies every imperfection, so satin is the more forgiving choice on a self built piece.
Fit handles last, after the paint has hardened, and mark their positions carefully so they line up across a pair of doors. Because a tall MDF wardrobe is heavy but not especially wide, fix it to the wall with a bracket, particularly with children in the house.
Building your own makes sense when the space is genuinely awkward: an alcove, a sloping ceiling, a chimney breast, or a width that no standard unit fits. In those cases a made to measure carcass uses space that a bought wardrobe cannot reach.
For a standard rectangular bedroom, the calculation is less clear. Sheet material, hinges, rail, fittings, primer and paint add up, and a full sheet of MDF is difficult to transport and handle without help. A factory built unit arrives finished, with edges properly sealed and hinges already recessed. Our modern 2 doors wardrobe UK options cover the common sizes, and bedroom furniture sets UK sale options keep the finish consistent across the wardrobe, bedsides and chest, which is difficult to match by hand. Furniture in Fashion sees plenty of customers who enjoyed building an alcove unit and bought the main wardrobe instead.
MDF is considerably heavier than people expect. A single 18mm sheet weighs around 40kg, and a finished 900mm wardrobe carcass is a two person lift. Plan for that before you start: have help available for standing the carcass upright, and assemble it in the room where it will live rather than building it in a garage and discovering it will not go up the stairs.
You need floor space roughly equal to the wardrobe height plus a metre to tilt the assembled carcass up. In a small bedroom this usually means moving the bed out for an afternoon. Lay a dust sheet or offcuts down first, as sliding a heavy MDF edge across a floor will mark it.
Cut outdoors or in a well ventilated space. MDF dust is very fine and stays airborne for a long time, so a proper fitted mask matters more here than with solid timber.
Three faults account for most disappointing results. The first is an out of square carcass, which shows up as doors that cannot be aligned no matter how much the hinges are adjusted. Measuring both diagonals before fixing the back panel prevents it entirely.
The second is inconsistent door gaps. Doors cut by hand from a single sheet will vary by a millimetre or two, and that variation is visible on a finished front. Cutting both doors of a pair to the same measurement in one setup, rather than measuring each separately, keeps them matched.
The third is unsealed edges. An MDF edge that has been given one coat of primer will always look slightly furry next to a smooth painted face, and it is the detail that most clearly separates a self build from a bought unit. The repeated prime, sand, prime cycle is tedious and it is the step worth not skipping.
18mm for the sides, top, base and shelves, and 6mm to 9mm for the back panel. Thinner board for the carcass will flex and will not hold screws reliably at the edges.
Around 600mm internally so clothes hang front to back on standard hangers, which usually means about 620mm externally. Shallower than roughly 550mm and you will need a side facing rail, which holds far fewer garments.
Always, particularly when screwing into the cut edge. MDF splits readily along its edges, and a pilot hole slightly narrower than the screw thread prevents it.
Prime the edge, let it dry, sand with 240 grit and prime again. Two or three cycles gives an edge as smooth as the faces. Unsealed MDF edges absorb paint unevenly and look fuzzy.
Two for doors up to about 1200mm tall, three up to 1800mm, and four above that. MDF doors are heavier than they look, so use the higher number if you are between sizes.
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.