A wardrobe quotation that looks tidy on paper can still hide three or four decisions nobody has made yet. Panel thickness is quoted, the finish is named, the price per linear metre looks reasonable — and then the site question arrives: which substrate, which edge band, which interior fittings, who supplies the tracks for a sliding door? Before you place an order for textured melamine wardrobes, the useful exercise is not comparing adjectives. It is getting specific answers written down.

The questions below are the ones we would put in front of any supplier — including our own project team — when a bedroom, guest room or villa fit-out is being specified around melamine-fronted wardrobe joinery.

Start with the panel, not the colour card

"Textured melamine" describes a decorative paper finish pressed onto a board core. The two things that actually decide how the door feels in the hand and how the carcass ages are the substrate underneath it and the texture itself. A woodgrain melamine with an embossed grain that does not line up with the printed pattern reads as fake from a metre away; a solid colour with a fine matte texture can read as far more expensive than it is.

Ask the supplier to state, in writing and per item:

• The substrate behind the melamine face — particleboard, MDF or plywood — and the board thickness for doors, carcass sides and shelves.
• Whether both faces of every panel are finished. A single-sided panel shows its core on the reverse of a door and on cut edges that are not band-taped.
• The edge treatment: factory ABS/PVC banding, post-formed wrap, or field-applied tape. Ask what happens at cut-to-size ends on site.
• Whether the texture is embossed in register with the print, and whether the grain direction runs vertically or horizontally on each panel — visible on a run of doors.

Order a full-size sample rather than a swatch card. A 100 mm chip tells you the colour; a door-sized sample tells you how the texture catches light, whether the edge band colour matches, and whether the panel bows when laid flat.

Ask what is being made to measure

Most wardrobe failures are dimensional, not cosmetic. A standard-depth carcass pushed into a sloping-ceiling void, or a door that clears the handle by 4 mm on one side and 12 mm on the other, both come from the same place: nobody confirmed which dimensions are fixed and which are adjusted.

Our textured melamine wardrobes are specified per project — sizing, material and finish, and the internal layout are set from the drawings rather than chosen from a fixed catalogue size. Whatever supplier you use, get these confirmed before production starts:

• Finished floor level and floor flatness across the run, plus the ceiling height at both ends of the wall.
• Where skirting, architraves, switches, sockets and air grilles fall relative to the carcass lines — and who adjusts for them.
• Whether scribes and filler panels are included, or whether the joiner is expected to cut on site.
• Door reveal and clearance dimensions at the hinge or track side, stated numerically on the shop drawing.

A supplier who returns a set of shop drawings with those numbers marked is doing the job properly. A supplier who sends back only an elevation and a price is leaving the risk with you.

Decide the door system before the interior layout

The opening method changes the room more than the finish does, and it constrains everything behind it. Hinged doors need clearance to swing; sliding doors need wall or an adjacent panel for the leaf to travel into, plus headroom for the track; open wardrobes give up dust protection in exchange for easy access. Corner and walk-in layouts bring their own geometry.

Worth asking, because these answers are often missing from quotations:

• For sliding doors: which track and runner set is included, whether it is supplied by the wardrobe maker or has to be bought locally, and what the maximum leaf height and weight are.
• For hinged doors: hinge type and brand, whether soft-close is standard or an upcharge, and the load rating at the stated door size.
• Whether handles, integrated pulls or push-open fittings are priced in — a profile change after order changes the panel machining.
• How the chosen system behaves against carpet, threshold strips and underfloor heating expansion.

If you are weighing up sliding door wardrobes against hinged ones for a tight bedroom, ask for both options quoted on the same internal layout. Comparing two different layouts tells you nothing.

Specify the inside, not just the front

The interior is where daily use is won or lost, and it is the part most often left vague until someone asks what a shelf costs. Our modular wardrobe range is built around layouts that follow how the space is used — drawer-focused units, hanging-focused units, shelf-focused units, and combinations of the three.

Put numbers against each of these in your enquiry:

• Hanging areas: single or double hang, rail heights, and how many long-garment bays the household actually needs.
• Drawer stacks: number of drawers, drawer box material, runner type and whether soft-close is fitted.
• Shelf spans: at what width a shelf is rated before it deflects under folded linen — ask for the span, not just "adjustable shelves".
• Lighting: whether integrated LED strips and their transformers are included, where the wiring exits the carcass, and who provides the electrician's first-fix.
• Back panel thickness and fixing method — a thin hardboard back on a tall run is a common source of racking.

If the quotation says "internal fittings as per standard", ask for the standard in writing, item by item.

What to expect when ordering from an overseas factory

Sourcing built-in joinery from a China-based manufacturer is normal practice on villa and hospitality projects, and it works well when the process is explicit. The questions below are the ones that separate a smooth delivery from an expensive lesson.

SANTERSON works as a one-stop furniture and building materials supplier, so wardrobe joinery is specified alongside the bedroom furniture, flooring, doors, lighting and bathroom fixtures in the same project package. That has a practical benefit: the skirting, door architrave and wardrobe carcass are drawn to the same detail rather than reconciled on site by whoever arrives first. Our custom and OEM service covers bespoke finishes and layouts, and freight, door-to-door delivery and installation support sit in the same scope.

Finish the match before you order

Melamine is specified against other surfaces constantly — flooring, wall panelling, kitchen doors, internal doors. Ask for physical samples of everything in the same room and lay them side by side under the actual lighting. Undertone differences that disappear on a colour card become obvious once three panels sit next to each other.

If the palette runs across wardrobes and kitchen cabinetry, ask whether the same board and edge band are available in both. Our textured melamine cabinets are offered on the same finish logic as the wardrobe range, which keeps a bedroom and an adjacent kitchen or laundry reading as one joinery scheme.

A pre-order checklist

None of these questions are unusual to ask. A supplier who answers them precisely is telling you their factory has done this before; one who answers them vaguely is telling you where your project risk sits.

Send us the drawings, the room dimensions and the finishes you are matching, and we will price the wardrobe joinery against that detail — with shop drawings back to you before anything goes into production. Contact SANTERSON to start a specification.