Shelf focused modular wardrobes look simple on a drawing: a run of carcases, a stack of shelves, a door in front. On site they fail in ordinary ways — shelves that clash with a hanging rail, a shelf height that no garment fits, a door that fouls the handle, a finish that does not match the joinery next to it. None of that is a shelf problem. It is a quantity and coordination problem. This guide covers both, using Shelf Focused Modular Wardrobes from our Modular Wardrobes collection as the running example.

Start with the inventory, not the room shape

A shelf layout only works when the shelf sizes answer to what is actually being stored. Before any dimension is fixed, list what has to sit in the wardrobe: folded knitwear, towels and linen, shoes, bags, boxes, folded denim, off-season items. Then decide what has to hang — shirts, jackets, dresses, trousers on hangers. Hanging items do not belong on shelves; if they are put there, they come out creased and the shelves become wasted depth.

That decision changes the product mix on the order. A purely shelved run may be the wrong unit for the main bedroom, while a guest room or box-storeroom often is. Where a project needs both behaviours in the same wall, the practical answer is a split: a shelf focused run in one bay and a rail run in the next. That is why we hold the collection open across Hanging Modular Wardrobes, Drawer Focused Modular Wardrobes and Combination Modular Wardrobes. The units are ordered and produced as one set, so the carcass depth, material and finish carry across the whole wall instead of being re-specified per unit.

Counting quantities: what has to be on the list

Under-ordering is usually a missing-item problem rather than a wrong-number problem. For each wardrobe run, work through the list below and record it on the same drawing that goes to us.

• Carcases by width and height. One line per run, with the finished external width, the finished height and the carcass depth. Give the depth as an external dimension, because door thickness reduces what is left inside.
• Shelf count per carcass, not per run. State the number of shelves in each unit and the clear opening each shelf creates. "Adjustable" is not a specification — the clear heights still need to be set, otherwise the first day of use reshelves the whole unit.
• Fixed versus adjustable shelves. Mark shelves that are fixed because a drawer unit, a lighting fitting or a cut-out sits behind them. Everything else can be adjustable, which gives the owner a way to re-plan later.
• Doors, drawn open. Hinged, sliding or open. Draw each door in the open position and check what it crosses: an adjacent wall, a bed, a handle, a switch plate, another door.
• Fillers and scribes. Walls are rarely square and floors are rarely level. Allow a filler at each end of a run rather than cutting a carcass, and note which end takes the filler.
• Interior add-ons. Drawer boxes, pull-out trays, shallow trays for belts, shoe shelves, mirrors. These need their own quantities and their own clearance.
• Lighting. Vertical strips and shelf-mounted fittings need a driver position and a cable route decided before the carcass is drilled. Add switches or motion sensors to the list, with the number of heads.
• Threshold and flooring levels. Record the finished floor level and the thickness of the floor build-up at the wardrobe line. A sliding door track sits on the finish floor, so a late change in floor thickness changes the door height.

Two quantity habits that cause rework

First, ordering to the shell dimension. The gap between a structural wall and a finished wall — plasterboard, insulation, a service run — can be enough to take a carcass off its planned width. Measure at the finished line, or state the allowance you have made for the build-up.

Second, counting rooms instead of runs. A dwelling with four bedrooms is not four wardrobes. Two rooms may share one mirrored layout, and one of them may get a shelf focused run because its owner stores boxes, not suits. Count runs, and give each run its own line. It is quicker to change one line on a schedule than to change an order after production starts.

Coordinating the wardrobe with the rest of the fit-out

Wardrobes are built-in work, so they sit in the middle of a trade sequence and have to be coordinated with the work either side of them.

• Flooring. Fix the order: floor first under the run, or wardrobe on the slab with the floor butted up to it. The choice changes the carcass height and the door clearance.
• Skirting and architrave. A carcass against a skirting needs a scribe cut or a set-back. Decide this on the drawing; on site the fitter will otherwise pack it out.
• Electrical. Switch positions, socket positions and reading lights have to sit outside the carcass envelope, or be scheduled to be cut into the unit with a known driver location.
• Ceiling. A full-height run meeting a set-out ceiling needs the ceiling line set out before the wardrobe height is fixed. Where a cornice or shadow gap is specified, allow for it in the height.
• Matching finishes. When the wardrobe is specified alongside kitchen or vanity joinery, the door material and finish need to be ordered from the same reference, not matched by eye from a photograph.
• Door swing versus furniture. Confirm bed and bedside positions before door hardware is chosen, particularly on hinged runs.

How our specification process supports this

Every Modular Wardrobes unit is made to measure for the project rather than picked from a fixed size grid. Our Custom & OEM Service covers the wardrobe itself — carcass size, layout, material, finish, interior configuration — and is delivered through the same sequence we run for any built-in package: brief and design proposal, quotation and detail confirmation, then production, shipment and follow-up. For projects that need more than the wardrobe, our Turnkey Solutions cover design, production, logistics, installation and after-sales in one package, so the joinery, vanities, doors and wall finishes can be ordered together and land on site together. That is worth real money on a multi-unit job, because the coordination items above get resolved once, across the whole set, instead of room by room.

A worked example

Say a guest wing has three identical bedrooms, each with a 2.4 m wide alcove, 2.5 m clear height, and an owner who stores luggage and linens on shelves but needs one short rail for robes. The run splits into three bays: two shelf focused bays and one short rail bay. The schedule records, per room, three carcasses, the shelf count for each bay, the fixed shelf over the rail, one rail with a ｄｒｏｐ rod, the hinged door schedule, the filler allowance on one end, and the driver position for one shelf light per bay. Because all three rooms are on one line, the three runs are produced as a single set, and any change to the door finish applies to all of them at once.

If the same job had been ordered room by room, the three identical rooms would have arrived as three separate orders with three chances to get the finish wrong.

What to send us before we quote

• The room or unit schedule with one line per wardrobe run.
• Finished external width, height and depth per run, plus the finished floor level.
• Shelf count and clear opening heights per carcass, with fixed shelves marked.
• Door type, door schedule and the open-door check.
• Interior add-ons with quantities.
• Material and finish reference, and the joinery it has to match.
• Lighting type, head count and driver position.
• Site constraints: skirting, ceiling set-out, service runs, floor build-up.

Send that and the quantity conversation is short. Send a plan view only and the first round of questions will be exactly the list above, which is one more cycle than the project can spare.

To price a set of shelf focused runs for a project, or to check whether a run should be shelved, hung or split between the two, send the schedule with your enquiry and we will return the carcass, shelf and door quantities with the corresponding Built-in furniture options.