Designer tallboy style comes from three things: slim proportions, a consistent flat fronted finish and quality hardware. You can achieve all three without paying designer prices by choosing a plain carcass with good proportions, upgrading the handles, adding tapered legs if the base is flat, and styling the top with restraint. The shape of the piece matters far more than the label on it.<\/p>\n
A tallboy is one of the most useful pieces of bedroom furniture in a British home, because it delivers substantial drawer capacity from a footprint of around forty five to fifty centimetres. It is also a piece where the difference between an ordinary unit and an expensive looking one comes down to details that are genuinely easy to control.<\/p>\n
Start here, because everything else is adjustable and this is not. Expensive looking tallboys share a set of proportions: they are narrow relative to their height, usually around a ratio of one to two and a half, and the drawers are either all equal or graduated so that they get deeper towards the base.<\/p>\n
Graduated drawers are a traditional cabinetmaking convention and they look considered because they follow a logic. Equal drawers look clean and contemporary. What looks cheap is a random arrangement, such as two small drawers, then a large one, then two more small ones with no pattern.<\/p>\n
Check the plinth or leg height too. A unit that sits flat on the floor with no base detail can look heavy. Either a recessed plinth, which creates a shadow gap, or visible legs will lift it. Both are common on the better looking pieces in our modern chest of drawers UK sale<\/a> range.<\/p>\n Decorative detailing is where cost is usually cut, and it is also what dates a piece fastest. Moulded edges, printed wood effect patterns, contrasting drawer fronts and fake panelling all signal a lower price point.<\/p>\n A flat fronted drawer in a single consistent finish looks far more expensive than a detailed one, and it is almost always cheaper to produce. Buy the plain version and put your money and effort into hardware, placement and styling.<\/p>\n Matt finishes generally read as more expensive than shiny ones in bedroom settings, because gloss shows every surface imperfection and every fingerprint. If you want gloss, keep it to a lighter colour where marks show less.<\/p>\n This is the single highest impact change you can make. Stock handles are frequently the weakest element of an affordable unit: thin, shiny chrome, slightly undersized and fitted in the wrong position.<\/p>\n Replacing them costs relatively little and takes an hour. The rules are straightforward. Choose one finish and use it throughout the room. Brushed brass, aged bronze and matt black all look considerably more expensive than polished chrome. Scale the handle to the drawer: a wide drawer needs either a long bar or two knobs rather than one small pull lost in the middle.<\/p>\n Check the fixing centres before ordering, which is the distance between the two screw holes. Common sizes are 96mm, 128mm and 160mm. Matching the existing centres means no new holes. If you want a different size, you can fill and redrill, but only on a painted finish where the repair can be disguised.<\/p>\n For a handleless look, remove the hardware entirely and fit push to open catches, or simply leave the top edge as a finger pull if the construction allows.<\/p>\n Swapping a plinth for tapered legs transforms the character of a tallboy. Angled timber legs give a mid century reading, straight brass or black metal legs give a contemporary one, and both lift the unit visually off the floor.<\/p>\n Fitting is usually a matter of screwing angled mounting plates into the base. Check that the base panel is thick enough to take a screw, and use a plate rather than fixing directly into thin board. Keep the added height modest, around ten to fifteen centimetres, so the drawers stay within comfortable reach.<\/p>\n Before doing this, check the stability implications. A tallboy is already a tall narrow object, and raising it increases the tipping risk. Always fit the supplied wall anchor strap, and do so whether or not you change the legs. This is not optional in a household with children.<\/p>\n A good paint job in a considered colour makes an ordinary tallboy look bespoke. Deep olive, charcoal, clay, muted navy and soft mushroom all work well in bedrooms and read as designer choices because mass produced furniture rarely comes in them.<\/p>\n Preparation determines the result. Clean thoroughly to remove polish residue, sand lightly to give the surface a key, apply a bonding primer suitable for the material, then two thin coats of an eggshell or satin furniture paint. Thin coats brushed or rolled carefully will beat one thick coat every time.<\/p>\n Paint the carcass and drawer fronts in the same colour rather than contrasting them, and remove the drawers to paint the fronts flat. A small foam roller gives the most even finish on flat panels.<\/p>\n Where you put a tallboy changes how expensive it looks. Placed on a plain wall with clear space either side, it reads as a deliberate object. Squeezed between a wardrobe and a radiator, it reads as storage.<\/p>\n Give it breathing room. Ideally position it on a wall you see when entering the room, and keep the area around it uncluttered. If it must sit in a row with other furniture, align the tops of adjacent pieces or deliberately step the heights so the difference looks intentional.<\/p>\n Lighting also matters. A wall light or a lamp positioned to cast light across the front of the unit picks up any texture and creates shadow at the drawer edges, which gives depth. Flat overhead lighting flattens everything.<\/p>\n The top of a tallboy is at roughly chest height, which makes it highly visible. Three objects at varying heights is the working formula: something tall such as a lamp or vase, something medium such as a stack of books or a box, and something low and horizontal such as a tray or a bowl.<\/p>\n Occupy around two thirds of the surface and leave the remaining third empty. Use a tray to group small items so they read as one object rather than five. Repeat one material from elsewhere in the room, such as the brass of your handles or the timber of your bed frame.<\/p>\n Avoid covering the top with a runner or cloth, which is the fastest way to make a piece of furniture look dated.<\/p>\n Style aside, some features genuinely affect how long the piece lasts and how it feels in use. Look for solid drawer bases rather than thin sheet, metal runners rather than timber rails, soft close on the larger drawers and a back panel that is fixed into a rebate rather than simply pinned on.<\/p>\n Test the drawers if you can. A drawer that pulls out smoothly and stops cleanly feels expensive regardless of what it cost. A drawer that sticks or drops at full extension undermines everything else.<\/p>\n Check the wall fixing kit is included. Any tall narrow unit should be strapped to the wall, and reputable pieces supply the hardware to do it.<\/p>\n A tallboy looks its best when it is part of a coherent scheme rather than a solitary item. Repeat the hardware finish on your bedside units, keep the timber or paint tones within one family, and let the tallboy be the tallest thing in the room apart from the wardrobe.<\/p>\n Coordinating pieces from one range removes the guesswork, and our modern bedroom furniture sets UK sale<\/a> and wooden bedside cabinets UK<\/a> are a practical starting point. We stock a broad range of tall storage at Furniture in Fashion<\/a> for bedrooms of every size.<\/p>\n Slim proportions, a plain flat fronted finish, consistent good quality hardware, a raised base or recessed plinth, and restrained styling on the top. None of these depend on a high price tag.<\/p>\n Almost always. Check the existing fixing centres and buy handles that match, or fill and redrill if the finish is paint. Knobs can replace bar handles by using one of the two existing holes and filling the other, though centring looks better.<\/p>\n Only if the base panel is solid enough to take mounting plates and you fit the wall anchor strap. Raising a tall narrow unit increases tipping risk, so the wall fixing becomes more important rather than less.<\/p>\n Muted, slightly complex colours look the most considered: deep olive, charcoal, clay, soft mushroom or muted navy. Keep the carcass and drawer fronts the same colour for the cleanest result.<\/p>\n Allow at least the depth of the deepest drawer plus room to stand, which usually means around eighty to ninety centimetres of clear floor in front of the unit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A tallboy is one of the most useful pieces in a British bedroom, delivering serious drawer capacity from a footprint of under half a metre. It is also a piece where the gap between ordinary and expensive looking comes down to details you can control….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":65683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[361,2299,205,2692],"class_list":["post-65682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bedroom-furniture","tag-bedroom-storage","tag-budget-styling","tag-chest-of-drawers","tag-tallboy"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65682","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=65682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Choose the plainest version available<\/h3>\n
Upgrade the handles<\/h3>\n
Add or change the legs<\/h3>\n
Paint is a legitimate shortcut<\/h3>\n
Placement does half the work<\/h3>\n
Style the top with restraint<\/h3>\n
What to check on the actual build<\/h3>\n
Building the rest of the room around it<\/h3>\n
Frequently asked questions<\/h3>\n
What makes a tallboy look expensive?<\/h3>\n
Can I replace the handles on any tallboy?<\/h3>\n
Is it safe to add legs to a tallboy?<\/h3>\n
What colour should I paint a tallboy?<\/h3>\n
How much clearance does a tallboy need in front?<\/h3>\n