Start with what the collection actually offers

The Display Cabinets range on santerson.com is built around configurable pieces rather than fixed catalogue sizes. Each listing in the group — wall mounted display cabinets, glass front display cabinets, open display units, curio cabinets and illuminated display cabinets — is described as made-to-measure, with material and finish options and a layout that can be tailored to the room. In practice that means you are specifying three separate variables at once: size, enclosure type and surface finish.

That flexibility is useful for villas, serviced apartments and hospitality guest suites where one wall has to do several jobs. It also means a budget built from a single reference photo will not hold, because two walls that look identical in a render can carry very different costs depending on how much glass, how many doors and how much lighting sits behind them.

Break the wall into priced elements before you ask for a number

The most reliable way to budget custom cabinetry is to split it the way the factory prices it. Write your enquiry as a list of elements, and request each element as its own line on the quotation:

• Carcass count and dimensions. Number of wall-mounted units, their width, height and depth, and where each one starts and ends relative to doors, skirting and cornices.
• Enclosure type per unit. Open shelving, glass front, solid door or a mix. Glass front display cabinets and curio cabinets sit at the top of that cost range; open display units sit at the bottom.
• Shelf layout and shelf count. Fixed versus adjustable shelves, plus any deeper shelf reserved for books or larger objects.
• Lighting. An illuminated display cabinet needs a lighting specification and an electrical plan. Where cabinets are part of a wider wall build, integrated cabinet lighting can be specified with the joinery instead of retrofitted on site.
• Finish and edge detail. Veneer, lacquer, laminate or painted fronts each carry different cost and lead-time profiles, and the same finish has to match cabinetry elsewhere in the project.
• Mounting and substrate. Wall type, load path and whether a backing panel or framed fixing detail is required. This affects both hardware and site preparation.

When your list and the quotation share the same structure, you can move up or down on one element — swap two glass fronts for open bays, reduce shelf count — without re-quoting the whole wall.

Scope the display cabinets together with the rest of the joinery

Display cabinets rarely stand alone. In a living room they usually sit next to media storage; in a guest suite they sit beside wardrobes and a vanity wall. If you order them as an isolated item, you pay twice for matching: once for the cabinet finish and again when the neighbouring joinery has to be brought back into line.

Grouping related items in one enquiry also lets you reuse carcass heights, shelf depths and plinth details across a project. Santerson's built-in furniture range covers open display niches within integrated storage walls, storage and display combinations in the media wall range, and floating modular shelves for lighter display work. Those systems can absorb display duty at a lower unit cost than a fully enclosed glass cabinet, so the mixed approach often lands closer to budget while keeping the look of a continuous wall.

A line-item template you can send with your enquiry

Fill the table even where you have no answer yet and mark those cells "to be confirmed". A supplier can quote confidently against a partly open specification, but an unspecified wall gets quoted at a conservative default — usually the more expensive option.

Where multi-product projects go over budget

• Duplicate finishes across separate orders. Cabinets ordered through one line and wardrobes through another, matched later by a local tradesperson.
• Late enclosure changes. Turning open bays into glass-fronted units after the carcass design is fixed touches panels, doors, glazing and lighting at once.
• Lighting decided on site. Fixtures surface-mounted because no channel or driver position was reserved during production.
• One-off sizes for every room. Repeating a proven carcass height across units is cheaper than designing each wall from scratch.
• Unclaimed site preparation. Wall strengthening, setting out and making good are easy to leave out of both the supplier's and the contractor's scope.

Most of these disappear when the display wall is specified in the same round as the rest of the built-in furniture. Ordering the joinery as one package keeps design, production and site coordination on a single track instead of running three separate threads that have to be reconciled later. The custom and OEM service covers bespoke sizing, material finishes and prototyping, which is what makes a repeated carcass detail across several rooms practical.

What to send so the first quotation is close to the final one

• Room elevations with dimensions, or a measured sketch marked with heights from floor and ceiling.
• The unit schedule from the table above, tagged per unit.
• Finish references — sample codes, a RAL or paint reference, or a photo of the cabinetry the display wall must match.
• What will actually be displayed in each bay. Weight and object size drive shelf depth, span and load detail.
• Project destination and how you want the goods delivered and installed.

If your project also includes loose furniture, flooring, wall panels or bathroom fixtures, mention them in the same enquiry. Consolidating categories into one shipment and one coordination thread is where a one-stop supplier earns its keep — fewer interfaces to manage, and one set of drawings covering the whole wall build.

Frequently asked questions