A project order of Two Tone Hinged Wardrobes rarely ends at the factory gate. These are made-to-measure built-in pieces: the doors must open cleanly in the finished room, the two finishes must sit together as one front across the whole run, and nothing can be trimmed on site the way a loose wardrobe can. That is why the delivery plan deserves as much attention as the specification. The steps below follow the way such an order actually moves through a China-based maker such as SANTERSON, from measured drawings to the room-by-room check after the doors are hung.

Set the delivery date first, then work backwards

Built-in joinery is fitted late in a construction programme, but it is made long before it is fitted. The sequence runs: final room dimensions taken on site, shop drawings issued and signed, production, quality inspection, packing, freight booking, inland haulage to the port, the ocean leg, clearance, inland haulage at the destination, and finally installation. Every link needs time, and just as much it needs a named person who owns it. Fix the date the wardrobe run must be usable in the completed property, then work backwards and give each stage a window — including the time you need to return signed drawings.

In practice the two stages that eat the most calendar time are not production or sailing. They are the drawing-approval loop and clearance at the destination. Building allowance into those two protects the programme far better than pushing the factory to cut faster.

Freeze the specification before anything ships

Hinged doors are sensitive to measurement error in a way that a free-standing cabinet is not. A gap that is slightly out shows along the entire front, and a door that rubs cannot be put right once the case is fixed between wall and floor. A two-tone front adds one more decision: the light and dark panels are produced separately, so where the tones meet, which way the grain runs, and how the edge is finished all have to appear on the drawing rather than in an email.

• Dimensions taken from finished floor, finished wall and finished ceiling levels, with skirting, cornices and any services running down the wall included.
• One elevation per wardrobe run, every door numbered, opening direction marked, and the light/dark layout drawn for each case.
• Interior layout confirmed case by case — hanging rails, shelves, drawers and the internal accessories specified for each.
• Hinges named in writing, with the door thickness and weight they are rated for, since a two-tone door panel may not match a standard one.
• Both finishes approved against physical samples rather than a screen image.
• Approval recorded: who signed, on what date, and which drawing revision production is working to.

Where a wardrobe order sits inside a wider fit-out, this is also the moment to settle it against the cabinetry, wall panelling and internal doors around it, so returns, reveals and skirting junctions are resolved once instead of argued over on site.

Choose the shipping basis before you compare prices

The same wardrobe order can be quoted on quite different terms, and the comparison means nothing until the terms match. Decide first who buys the freight, who lodges the import entry, and who moves the container from the port to the property.

• The supplier delivers to the load port and you take the ocean leg onward — a lower headline figure, but destination costs and any delays at the far end are yours to absorb.
• The supplier brings the cargo to your port and you clear it and haul it in — sensible if you already work with a broker and a haulier you trust.
• The supplier carries the order to the site, arranging the freight, the documents and the final leg. Furniture logistics and door-to-door delivery covers sea, air and rail freight, customs paperwork, packing and container loading, shipment tracking and delivery, with a coordinator holding the schedule from the factory floor to your building.

Whichever you choose, ask for it stated in writing for your destination: which port the cargo reaches, whether the final leg goes to the building or stops at the kerb, and who carries the risk while the goods are at sea. Cargo insurance is a small line beside the cost of re-making a two-tone door run, so settle at quotation stage whether it is included or arranged on your side.

Pack and load for the doors, not for the boards

Wardrobe cases and door panels fail in transit in predictable places: chipped front edges, scratches where protective film has shifted, and cracked panels where a lashing strap bit into a stack. A project order should therefore travel as a set, not as loose stock.

Ask for front edges protected, panels carried flat on rigid battens, doors interleaved so finished faces never touch, and hardware bagged and tagged to the case it belongs to. Then ask for the packing list to be written the way the site team will read it: case number, room, pieces, gross weight and bundle size. A list keyed to room numbers is what lets two people find the master bedroom doors in a container of mixed joinery without unpacking half of it.

Loading deserves a question of its own. Tall panels shipped upright are far less likely to split than panels laid flat under cartons, and a container that also carries stone, tiles or lighting wants the heavy goods low and the joinery on top of dry, level dunnage. Ask how the wardrobe order shares the container with the rest of the fit-out, and request photographs of the loaded container before the doors are closed. Those photographs are the evidence a claim rests on.

Get clearance moving with paperwork that agrees with itself

Containers sit at destination ports over paperwork far more often than over cargo. Invoice, packing list and bill of lading should describe the same goods in the same words, with the same totals, and those words should match what is marked on each bundle.

• Descriptions that name the goods — built-in wardrobes, hinged door panels — rather than internal item codes alone.
• Piece counts and weights reconciled across invoice, packing list and bill of lading before the documents are released.
• Origin declared, with a certificate of origin where your broker or your buyer requires one.
• Consignee correct at the destination, and for apartments and managed buildings a delivery slot booked with building management before the truck is booked.

Brief your broker while the cargo is still on the water, not after it lands, and send the packing list ahead so declaration requirements for your destination are settled in advance. If the wardrobes travel with the rest of a villa or hotel fit-out, one coordinated set of documents keeps the whole order on one schedule rather than three.

Inspect room by room on the day the doors come off the truck

Inspection works when it happens as the container is emptied, in the room each case is destined for, with the signed elevation beside you. Anything short then reported can still be re-made and flown; reported after the decoration is done, it becomes a programme problem.

• Bundle count against the packing list, before anything is unwrapped.
• Panel faces read in daylight rather than torchlight, looking for chips, scratches and any mismatch where the two tones meet.
• Case numbers matched to the room labels on the drawing, so nothing lands in the wrong apartment.
• Hardware sets confirmed complete, spare hinges included.
• Damage photographed with the bundle number in the same frame, on the outer packing and on the panel.

Then let the doors prove themselves. Each one is opened and closed, the gap along the top and bottom of the run measured and written down, and only then is the sheet signed. Where the maker's scope runs on past fitting, snagging, replacement parts and upkeep sit under furniture installation and after-sales support, so a door that drops months later has somewhere to go.

Coordinate the wardrobes with the joinery around them

One wardrobe order on its own is easy to plan. The difficulty arrives when the same property wants flooring, panelling, cabinetry and internal doors carrying the same two tones, with the joinery fitted after the floor and before the decoration. Taking those from one supplier means a single drawing set, one production window and one container plan — and the tone of a wardrobe panel and the tone of a wall panel come off the same line rather than from two factories comparing photographs until they look alike. Where that supplier also handles the fit-out around the wardrobes, the turnkey approach to villa, hotel and office projects ties the schedule for the two-tone run to the schedule for everything it has to sit against.

When the tones must answer a design intent from elsewhere, ask for physical samples of both early, and put the sample reference on the drawing. Two-tone work is judged at the line where the two finishes meet, and a line agreed on paper long before the first panel is cut is the cheapest decision in the whole delivery plan.

Before the container leaves: what should already be settled

None of it is complicated on its own. What decides whether an international wardrobe order lands cleanly is that these items are settled in order — drawings, freight terms and the inspection standard all agreed before the first panel is cut. Settle them once, and a two-tone hinged run arrives ready to be hung, and stays hung. Send us your drawings, the two finishes you are working to and the destination, and we will build the production and delivery schedule around your site programme.