A wardrobe door is built by making a flat, square panel that matches the opening, then hanging it on hinges or sliding gear. The two common constructions are a slab door, which is a single sheet of MDF or plywood cut to size and edged, and a frame and panel door, made from four stiles and rails with a thinner panel set into a groove. For most home projects a slab door is the sensible choice: it needs fewer tools, stays flat, and takes paint or veneer well. A frame and panel door takes longer but gives a traditional shaker look that suits older UK properties.<\/p>\n
The single most important number in the whole job is the opening size, and the second is the gap you leave around the door. Get those right and everything else is straightforward joinery.<\/p>\n
Measure the height in three places and the width in three places, then work from the smallest reading. Wardrobe carcasses are rarely perfectly square, particularly flat pack units that have been moved, and a door cut to the largest measurement will bind.<\/p>\n
Next, decide your clearances. A hinged door usually needs a gap of around two to three millimetres on each side and at the top, with a slightly larger gap at the bottom so it clears carpet. A pair of doors meeting in the middle needs the same gap between them. Sliding doors are different: they overlap, so each door is made wider than half the opening, typically by twenty five to thirty millimetres, so there is no sight line down the middle when they are closed.<\/p>\n
Write these figures down before you cut anything. Almost every failed door project traces back to a number remembered wrongly halfway through.<\/p>\n
Eighteen millimetre MDF is the default for painted doors. It is stable, has no grain to telegraph through paint, and cuts with clean edges. Its weakness is weight and its dislike of moisture, so it is not the choice for a wardrobe in a damp room.<\/p>\n
Birch plywood at eighteen millimetres is lighter, stronger and holds screws better, which matters where hinges bite. The edges show layered plies, which some people like as a detail and others cover with edging tape or a solid timber lipping.<\/p>\n
Veneered MDF gives a real timber face without the movement of solid wood, and suits a wardrobe you plan to oil or lacquer rather than paint. Solid timber doors look and feel best but expand and contract with humidity, so they need seasonal allowance in the gaps and are the least forgiving for a first attempt.<\/p>\n
If you want the finish of a factory made door without the build, comparing your plan against a ready made unit is worth a moment. Our modern 2 door wardrobes UK sale<\/a> show the panel proportions and gap sizes that manufacturers settle on, which is useful reference even if you go on to build your own.<\/p>\n Cut the panel to your final dimensions using a track saw or a circular saw run against a clamped straight edge. A jigsaw will not give you a straight enough cut over a two metre length. Support the sheet fully so it cannot flex mid cut.<\/p>\n Sand the faces lightly with a medium abrasive, then deal with the edges. Iron on melamine edging tape is quickest for painted work. A solid timber lipping glued and pinned on gives a tougher edge that survives years of knocks, and it can be rounded slightly with a block plane so the door feels finished rather than sharp.<\/p>\n Prime all faces and edges, including the back. Priming only the front is a common shortcut, and it leads to a door that absorbs moisture unevenly and bows within a season. Two thin coats of primer, sanded between, then two thin topcoats gives a surface that looks factory made.<\/p>\n For a shaker style door, cut four pieces of solid timber or MDF: two vertical stiles running the full height, and two horizontal rails fitting between them. Typical proportions are stiles and rails around seventy to ninety millimetres wide, with the bottom rail slightly deeper for visual weight.<\/p>\n Cut a groove around six millimetres wide and ten millimetres deep along the inner edge of every piece to receive the panel. A router with a straight cutter and a fence does this cleanly. Join the corners with dowels, biscuits or a simple bridle joint, and dry assemble everything before glue touches it.<\/p>\n The centre panel should be cut a couple of millimetres undersized in both directions so it floats in the grooves. Never glue the panel in. It needs room to move, and a glued panel will split the frame or crack the paint line at the first change in humidity.<\/p>\n Clamp the assembled door on a flat surface and check the diagonals match. If they differ, ease one clamp and nudge the frame until they agree, because a door that dries out of square will never hang well.<\/p>\n Concealed cup hinges are the practical choice for a modern wardrobe. They are adjustable in three directions after fitting, which means small errors in the carcass can be corrected without recutting anything. Drill the thirty five millimetre cup holes with a forstner bit in a drill stand if possible, set back from the door edge by the amount the hinge manufacturer specifies, usually around three to five millimetres.<\/p>\n Use two hinges on doors up to about one metre tall, three up to about one and a half metres, and four on full height wardrobe doors. Under hinging is the usual cause of doors that sag and catch after a few months.<\/p>\n Butt hinges suit a traditional frame and panel door and give a slimmer look from the side, but they offer no adjustment, so your mortices need to be accurate first time.<\/p>\n Fit handles at a comfortable height, generally around one metre from the floor on a full height door, and set them consistently across a pair. Marking both doors from the same reference point rather than measuring each separately keeps them level.<\/p>\n Sliding doors avoid the swing space that hinged doors need, which is often the deciding factor in a narrow bedroom. The door itself is built the same way, but it is usually lighter, and it needs a top track and a bottom guide, or a top hung system with rollers fixed to the door.<\/p>\n Weight limits matter here. Most domestic sliding gear is rated between thirty and eighty kilograms per door, and an eighteen millimetre MDF door at full bedroom height sits well within that only if you keep the construction simple. Adding mirror, glass or a heavy overlay can take you past the rating, at which point the door runs stiffly and the rollers wear quickly.<\/p>\n The track must be dead level. A track that is even a few millimetres out will cause the door to drift open or closed on its own. Fit the top track first, hang the door, then set the bottom guide to suit. If the mechanics of this feel like more work than the project warrants, our range of modern sliding wardrobes UK sale<\/a> arrives with the gear already engineered and rated for the doors supplied.<\/p>\n Once the door hangs and closes cleanly, add soft close dampers or small buffer pads so it does not slam. Fit a magnetic catch or push latch if you are working handleless.<\/p>\n Inside, plan the layout before you fix anything permanent. A single full width rail wastes a surprising amount of vertical space. Splitting the interior so one side takes long hanging and the other takes a double rail for shirts and folded items typically increases usable capacity by a third. Shelving above and a drawer or basket at the base keeps small items from collecting on the floor of the unit. If floor level storage is short elsewhere in the room, a modern blanket box UK<\/a> at the foot of the bed takes the bulky bedding that always ends up crushing everything on a wardrobe shelf.<\/p>\n Cutting the door to the exact opening size with no clearance is the most frequent error, and it produces a door that rubs on the frame the moment the weather changes. Skipping the primer on the reverse face is the second. Using too few hinges is the third.<\/p>\n One more: assembling the door somewhere other than a flat surface. A garage floor with a slight slope, or a workbench with a twist in it, transfers that twist into the glued frame. Check flatness with a long straight edge before the glue goes off, not after.<\/p>\nBuilding a Slab Door<\/h3>\n
Building a Frame and Panel Door<\/h3>\n
Hinges, Handles and Hanging<\/h3>\n
Making a Sliding Door Instead<\/h3>\n
Finishing and Fitting Out<\/h3>\n
Common Mistakes Worth Avoiding<\/h3>\n