Fitted wardrobe quotes can swing from around £1,200 to well over £8,000 for what sounds like the same job, which makes it hard to know if you are being looked after or taken for a ride. The price is driven by a handful of specific things: the width of the run, the carcass material, the doors, and how straight your walls and floors actually are. Here is how the numbers break down, based on the sort of jobs we quote across Bedford and the surrounding villages.
Most joiners price fitted wardrobes by the linear metre of run, then add for extras. As a rough guide for a bespoke, made-on-site or made-to-measure job, expect somewhere between £900 and £2,200 per linear metre supplied and fitted, including VAT where the firm is registered.
That means a typical 2.5m alcove-to-alcove run in a Victorian terrace off Tavistock Street usually lands between £2,500 and £4,500. A full wall of 4m in a newer Wixams or Great Denham bedroom, with sliding doors and a decent internal layout, is more often £4,500 to £8,000. Simple painted MDF fronts on a straightforward straight wall sit at the lower end; oak veneer, curved returns, or a dressing room layout with drawer banks and lighting sit at the top.
Doors are the single biggest variable. A plain shaker door in primed MDF is a fraction of the cost of a solid oak or a made-to-measure sliding system, and sliding gear alone can add several hundred pounds to a run. Spray finishing, rather than brush painting on site, typically adds 15 to 25 per cent to the door and frame cost, but it gives a far better surface on a colour like a deep green or navy.
Internals matter more than people expect. Hanging rail and a couple of shelves is cheap. Soft-close drawer boxes, pull-down rails, internal LED strips, shoe racks and a jewellery tray can quietly add £600 to £1,500 to a job. It is worth being honest with yourself about which of those you will genuinely use every day.
Then there is the building itself. Older Bedford properties, particularly the terraces around Castle Road and Queen's Park, rarely have square walls, level floors or plumb chimney breasts. Scribing units to a wonky wall, packing out a sloping floor, or working around a bulkhead or a boxed-in soil pipe adds hours. That is real work, not padding, and a good quote will say where it applies.
A freestanding wardrobe from a high street retailer might cost £400 to £900 and can be moved when you go. Fitted costs more, but it uses the full height to the ceiling and the full depth of an awkward alcove, which usually gives 30 to 40 per cent more usable storage in the same footprint.
For most Bedfordshire homes, fitted wardrobes are best thought of as a decoration and storage decision rather than an investment that pays back on resale. They do help a bedroom present well when you sell, particularly in smaller rooms where a bulky freestanding unit makes the space look cramped, but do not expect a pound for pound return.
National fitted furniture companies often quote a headline figure with a time-limited discount attached. Independent joiners tend to quote flat. Neither is automatically better value, but you can only compare them properly if both quotes list the same things.
Ask every firm to break out the same items so you are comparing like with like.
No, fitted wardrobes are internal joinery and need neither. The one thing to watch is that you do not block or cover a smoke alarm, a boiler flue or an electrical consumer unit.
A standard 2 to 3 metre run is usually two to four days on site, plus a lead time of three to six weeks for design and manufacture. Sprayed finishes and complex sliding systems add to both ends of that.
Yes, and that is often where they earn their money, since the alcoves either side of a chimney breast and the space under a loft conversion slope are almost impossible to use well with freestanding furniture. Expect to pay more, as every panel has to be cut and scribed to the actual angles in your room.