Wardrobe doors attach in two stages: the hinge plates are screwed into pre drilled positions on the carcass side panel, and the cup hinges are fixed into the recessed holes on the back of the door. You then clip or screw the two halves together and adjust. On a flat pack unit the holes are already bored, so the job is a matter of matching the right hinge to the right position, working top down, and leaving the fine adjustment until every door is hanging.<\/p>\n
Doing it in the wrong order is what turns a twenty minute job into an afternoon. The full sequence below assumes a typical modern wardrobe with concealed European style cup hinges, which covers the majority of units sold in the UK, and then covers sliding doors separately because they work on an entirely different principle.<\/p>\n
Two things determine whether this goes smoothly. First, the carcass must be square and standing on a level base. A wardrobe that has been assembled slightly out of true will never hang its doors evenly, no matter how much you adjust the hinges. Check the diagonals across the front of the carcass with a tape measure: if the two diagonal measurements match, the frame is square.<\/p>\n
Second, the carcass should be upright and, where the design calls for it, secured to the wall before doors go on. Doors add weight to the front of the unit and shift its centre of gravity forward. Fitting them while the carcass is lying flat also risks bending a hinge arm when you stand the wardrobe up.<\/p>\n
Lay a blanket or the flattened packaging on the floor to work on. Melamine and gloss fronts mark easily, and a bare floor will scuff a door edge in seconds. This applies to any finish, from a plain white unit through to the gloss fronts in our modern wardrobes UK sale<\/a> range.<\/p>\n The list is short:<\/p>\n Sort the fittings into groups before you begin. Wardrobe packs often include several similar looking screws, and the short fat ones for the cup hinge are not interchangeable with the longer ones for the mounting plate. Using a screw that is too long into a side panel can push through the outer face.<\/p>\n Start with the carcass. The mounting plates fix to the inside face of the side panel, at the pre drilled positions. On most units these are two small holes set a fixed distance apart. Place the plate so the holes line up, insert the screws by hand for the first couple of turns to make sure they bite straight, then tighten.<\/p>\n Do not overtighten. Chipboard threads strip easily, and a stripped hole means the plate will work loose under the door’s weight. Snug is enough. If a hole does strip, a matchstick or a sliver of wooden dowel pushed in with a little wood glue gives the screw something fresh to bite into.<\/p>\n Work top down and keep the plates in matched pairs across the two sides if you are hanging a pair of doors. Most wardrobes use two hinges per door up to about 180cm tall, and three on taller or heavier doors, including mirrored ones. Mirrored doors are appreciably heavier, so never omit the middle hinge on a three hinge design. If you are working with a mirrored front, treat the glass with the same care you would give any of our modern bedroom mirrors UK sale<\/a> pieces.<\/p>\n Turn the door face down on your blanket. The recessed circular holes on the back edge take the hinge cups. Sit each cup into its hole, making sure the hinge arm points towards the door edge and the fixing plate of the hinge sits flush and parallel with the edge.<\/p>\n That parallel alignment is the step people rush. If the hinge sits a degree or two off, the door will not close square and no amount of later adjustment fully corrects it. Press the cup fully home, eye the arm against the door edge, then fix the two screws.<\/p>\n Some hinges have small pre drilled pilot holes and some do not. Where there are none, mark the position with a bradawl before driving the screw so it does not wander. Again, hand tighten the final turns.<\/p>\n This is the moment for a second pair of hands if you have them, particularly on tall or mirrored doors. Lift the door into position, offer the hinge arms up to the mounting plates, and connect them. Clip on hinges simply push together until they click. Screw on types have a single machine screw that draws the arm onto the plate.<\/p>\n Connect the top hinge first and let the door hang from it while you line up the lower ones. Slide your spacers, the coins or offcuts, under the bottom edge of the door to hold it at the right height while you work. Once every hinge is engaged, open and close the door once slowly to check nothing binds.<\/p>\n Repeat for the second door if you have a pair. On a two door unit the gap between the doors is the detail your eye will always find, so aim for an even vertical line before you consider the job done. Our modern 2 doors wardrobe UK sale<\/a> designs generally allow a few millimetres of movement in each direction, which is plenty to bring a pair into line.<\/p>\n Concealed hinges adjust in three planes, and each has its own screw:<\/p>\n Adjust in quarter turns and close the door between each one. Small movements compound quickly, and it is easy to chase a problem from one end of the door to the other. Work on the top hinge first, since it carries most of the visible alignment.<\/p>\n If a door closes but springs back slightly, the depth adjustment is usually too far out and the hinge is not reaching its closed position. If it drags on the carcass at the bottom, raise the plate rather than tilting the door.<\/p>\n Sliding doors do not use hinges at all. The door hangs from or sits within a track, and the fitting sequence reverses: the top track is fixed first and levelled carefully, the bottom track or guide is aligned directly beneath it, then the doors are lifted in and their rollers adjusted.<\/p>\n Levelling the top track is the whole job. A track out of level by even a couple of millimetres across a two metre span leaves the doors visibly tilted and prone to drifting open. Use a long spirit level rather than a short one, and pack behind the fixings with thin washers if the wall is uneven.<\/p>\n Most sliding doors have adjustment screws on the roller carriages that raise or lower each end of the door. Set both doors so their meeting edges are parallel, then check they run the full length of the track without catching. If you are considering this route for a narrow bedroom, our modern sliding wardrobes UK sale<\/a> range removes the door swing from your floor plan entirely.<\/p>\n Doors that will not sit right almost always trace back to the carcass rather than the hinges. Check that the unit is level front to back and side to side, and that the floor beneath it is not sloping, which is common in older British houses. Packing under one corner with thin card often solves an alignment problem that resisted twenty minutes of hinge adjustment.<\/p>\n Loose hinges after a few months usually mean the screws were overtightened during fitting and have stripped their holes. Fix them properly with dowel and glue rather than moving to a longer screw. And if a door has started to sag, the middle hinge is often missing or was never adjusted to take its share of the load.<\/p>\n If you are assembling a full bedroom scheme, it is worth checking the whole set for square once everything is in place. Coordinated groups such as those in our modern bedroom furniture sets UK sale<\/a> collections look their best when the door and drawer lines run true across the room. You can see the wider range at Furniture in Fashion<\/a>, where we stock modern furniture for UK homes with free delivery to most UK mainland postcodes.<\/p>\n Two hinges suit doors up to roughly 180cm tall. Taller doors, and any mirrored door, need three to spread the weight and prevent sagging. Follow the pre drilled positions on the door and carcass, since they are set for the door’s weight.<\/p>\n After. Stand and secure the carcass first, then hang the doors. Fitting them while the wardrobe is flat adds weight to the front and risks bending a hinge arm when you lift the unit upright.<\/p>\n Use the side to side adjustment screw, the one nearest the door face, in quarter turns on each door until the vertical gap is even. If it will not correct, check the carcass is square by comparing the two diagonal measurements across the front.<\/p>\n Push a matchstick or a sliver of wooden dowel into the hole with a little wood glue, let it set, then drive the original screw back in. Moving to a longer screw risks pushing through the outer face of a side panel.<\/p>\n Yes for standard doors, though a second person makes tall or mirrored doors much easier. Connect the top hinge first, let the door hang from it, and use coins or thin offcuts as spacers under the bottom edge to hold the height while you engage the lower hinges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wardrobe doors attach in two stages: hinge mounting plates screw into pre drilled positions on the carcass side panel, and cup hinges seat into the recessed holes on the back of the door, before the two halves clip or screw together. The order matters more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":57374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3334],"tags":[5587,5412,5604,70],"class_list":["post-57373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to-guide-for-your-home","tag-diy-guide","tag-flat-pack-assembly","tag-hinges","tag-wardrobes"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tools and Fittings You Need<\/h3>\n
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Fitting the Hinge Plates<\/h3>\n
Fitting the Cup Hinges to the Door<\/h3>\n
Hanging the Door<\/h3>\n
Adjusting for an Even Finish<\/h3>\n
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Sliding Wardrobe Doors<\/h3>\n
Common Problems and Fixes<\/h3>\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h3>\n
How many hinges does a wardrobe door need?<\/h3>\n
Should you fit wardrobe doors before or after standing the unit up?<\/h3>\n
Why is there an uneven gap between my two wardrobe doors?<\/h3>\n
What do you do if a hinge screw hole has stripped?<\/h3>\n
Can you fit wardrobe doors on your own?<\/h3>\n