Dressing room · walk-in wardrobe
A walk-in wardrobe: first the clothes, then the cabinetry
How much hangs, how much is folded, and what will be added over the coming years? That inventory shapes the wardrobe — not the other way round.
A dressing room is where bespoke pays off most, because every centimetre counts. A ready-made wardrobe comes in fixed heights and fixed depths. A bespoke one runs to the ceiling, fills the corner, and is exactly as deep as whatever hangs in it.
Part of bespoke furniture.
N° 01
First take stock
We do not begin by measuring the room, but by counting the clothes. How do you order them? Do you hang a great deal, or would you rather fold? How many shoes, how many coats, how many smaller items? With two people it is almost never evenly divided, and that division is what shapes the layout.
On top of it we allow, where the room permits, about twenty per cent for growth. A wardrobe that is full on the day it is handed over forces you to start clearing out at once — and that is not what you had it made for.
Linen and towels often join it, where there is no good place for them elsewhere in the house. Better counted in now than squeezed in later.
N° 02
Hanging or folded
That is the first real choice, and it bears directly on the dimensions. A wardrobe to hang in is roughly 56 to 70 centimetres deep; for folded clothes, 25 to 40 centimetres is enough. Fold a great deal and you keep room to spare; hang a great deal and you need the depth.
Long hanging
Coats, long dresses and overcoats need a bay of their own. We plan it early, because it sets the heights of everything around it.
Short hanging
Shirts, blouses, jackets, trousers and skirts — for most people the greater part of the wardrobe.
Folded
Jumpers, polo shirts and t-shirts often sit better folded than hung, and keep their shape that way.
Smaller items
Underwear, socks and tights need drawers with an interior of their own. Without it, the overview is gone within a week.
Accessories
Jewellery, scarves, bags, ties. How much room that takes depends on what you have a great deal of, and on what matters to you.
N° 03
Shoes are a chapter of their own
Shoes take more room than people expect, and they are only usable if you can see them. So we prefer to group them in one or two cabinets, on pull-out shelves or set slightly on the slope, so that a single glance tells you what is there.
The shoes that go out every day usually stay downstairs by the front door. What stands in the dressing room is what you choose deliberately.
N° 04
Light enough to see colour
In a dressing room, lighting is not atmosphere but equipment. With five pairs of navy trousers, the wrong light leaves you unable to tell them apart. And in a northern climate you dress in the dark for much of the year.
So we put the light inside the cabinets, not only above them: a line behind an upright, a strip beneath a shelf, lighting switched by the door itself. A good clothes shop is an honest teacher in this — not for the layout, but for how clothes are shown.
N° 05
Open or closed
A dressing room can disappear entirely behind fronts, or stay open and be separated from the sleeping area by a sliding door, a hinged door or a glazed screen. That choice is about calm: what you see when you open your eyes in the morning.
N° 06
Where the dressing room belongs
Where the plan allows, we prefer to place the dressing room between the bedroom and the bathroom. A bathroom opening straight off the bedroom carries sound and light at the very moments the other person is asleep — anyone who rises early or comes home late notices it at once. A dressing room in between absorbs that.
It also follows how the rooms are actually used: washing in the bathroom, dressing in the bedroom, and the clothes precisely in between.
N° 07
What bespoke adds here
To the ceiling, wall to wall
Standard wardrobes come in fixed heights; bespoke does not. The space above a ready-made wardrobe is space you pay for and never use.
Corners and leftover dimensions
Exactly where storage is to be won, and exactly where a standard wardrobe stops.
A low block or a seat in the middle
Where the room allows: a low run of drawers, or somewhere to sit while dressing.
Continuity with the rest of the house
A chest of drawers in the bedroom in the same finish, or the detailing of the kitchen returning here. That is the thread bespoke exists for.
With bespoke you pay for the centimetres you actually use: no filler panels, no dead corners. The wider comparison is on the overview page.
From practice
How far it can go
For a client who is colour-blind, we had the colours of his ties marked in relief on the interior — a small code of our own, read with the fingertips. Blue, pink, white, black, brown: he now picks the right one himself.
No such solution exists ready-made. Which is precisely why we could make it.
A kitchen in mind as well? Read about bespoke kitchens.
Introduction
Let us look first
A dressing room begins with the room and with the wardrobe you have now. With both in front of us, we can draw a layout that still works in five years’ time.