Wardrobe Accessories

One at a time

Slab and shaker fronts

A flat slab front reads modern and is the least expensive way to close a wardrobe. A shaker front with a routed frame suits an older Toronto house and costs roughly fifteen per cent more across the run. Both take the same interior, so this is a decision about the room rather than the storage.

Matte and fluted glass inserts

Glass inserts break up a long run of solid doors without showing the contents in detail. Fluted glass is the more forgiving of the two — it reads as texture from across the room — while matte glass is flatter and quieter. Both are usually used on some doors rather than all of them.

Mirror fronts

A mirrored door does two jobs and takes no floor, which is why it is the most common request in a small bedroom. It also doubles the apparent depth of the room. The trade is weight: a mirrored door needs heavier hinges and a stiffer frame, and it shows fingerprints in a way a matte front does not.

Soft-close hinges and runners

Undermount soft-close runners on every drawer and soft-close hinges on every door. It is included rather than optional on our wardrobes, because a wardrobe in a bedroom that bangs at six in the morning is a wardrobe you come to dislike.

Interior drawer systems

Behind the doors, drawers can run the full depth of the carcass rather than being set back from a face, which is why a wardrobe drawer holds more than a closet drawer of the same width. Velvet linings and Lucite dividers are available here too, but most people spend that money on the front instead.

Full-height pull-out towers

A narrow full-height unit that pulls straight out, shelved on both faces. It turns a twelve-inch gap at the end of a run — usually lost to a wall or a return — into shoes, folded knitwear or bags reachable from the front.

Crown molding and scribed fillers

The trim that carries the wardrobe to the ceiling and closes the gap against an out-of-square wall. On a floor-to-ceiling run in a heritage house this is most of what separates a fitted wardrobe from a freestanding one, because no wall in those houses is straight.

Lighting behind the doors

A wardrobe closed against a bedroom wall gets no daylight at all. Strip lighting on a door sensor turns on as the door opens and off as it shuts, which is more useful here than in any other room in the house.

Questions