In this guide
- What Counts as Fitted Bedroom Furniture?
- How Do You Use the Space Above a Bed?
- Storage People Actually Use
- Are Drawers Better Than Shelves?
- How Much Hanging Space Do You Need?
- Can You Fit a Dressing Area Into a Normal Bedroom?
- What About Bedrooms With Sloping Ceilings?
- Common Questions About Fitted Bedroom Furniture
- Planning Your Room
Most people ask for wardrobes and stop there. The rooms that work best are the ones planned as a whole, where the wardrobes, the bedside units, the drawers and the space over the bed were all designed together and share the same lines.
What Counts as Fitted Bedroom Furniture?
Anything built into the room rather than placed in it: wardrobes, over-bed storage, bedside units, drawer banks, dressing tables, window seats and headboards.
The advantage of treating them as one scheme is not just appearance, though matching finishes and aligned door lines do make a room look considerably calmer. It is that the pieces can share space. A bedside unit built into the end of a wardrobe run takes no extra floor. A headboard with integrated shelving removes the need for bedside tables at all.
How Do You Use the Space Above a Bed?
A bridging unit over the bed turns the least usable wall in the room into the most storage-dense one.
The layout is a wardrobe either side of the bed with a run of cupboards bridging across above the headboard. It suits smaller rooms particularly well, because the bed has to go somewhere anyway and the wall above it is otherwise decorative.
Two details matter. Leave enough clearance above the headboard that nobody sitting up catches their head, which usually means the underside of the bridge sits at least 1,100mm from the mattress top. And keep the bridging cupboards shallower than the wardrobes either side, typically 300mm rather than 600mm, so the space does not feel enclosed.
Storage People Actually Use
High level cupboards are excellent for luggage, spare bedding and out of season clothing. They are poor for anything you need weekly, because you will stop climbing for it within a month. Plan the top tier for things you touch a few times a year, and keep everyday items between knee and shoulder height.
Are Drawers Better Than Shelves?
For folded clothes, drawers are better in almost every case. A deep shelf holds more in theory and less in practice.
The reason is access. On a shelf, the pile at the back is invisible and never worn. In a drawer, everything is visible from above when it opens, so the whole capacity gets used. Drawers cost more because each one is a small piece of cabinetry, so the sensible compromise is a bank of drawers for folded items and hanging space for everything else.
Shelves still earn their place for shoes, bags and boxed items where you can see the whole shelf at a glance.
How Much Hanging Space Do You Need?
Plan for two heights rather than one. Most wardrobes waste space by hanging everything at full length.
| Hanging type | Height needed | What it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Short hanging | Around 1,000mm | Shirts, blouses, folded trousers, jackets |
| Long hanging | Around 1,600mm | Dresses, coats, full length garments |
| Double hanging | Two tiers in one bay | Doubles capacity where most items are short |
For most people the majority of hanging items are short, so dedicating one bay to double hanging and one to long hanging uses the height far better than a single rail across the whole run.
Can You Fit a Dressing Area Into a Normal Bedroom?
Usually yes, and it takes less room than people expect. A dressing area needs about 900mm of width and the same again to stand in.
The common arrangement is a break in the wardrobe run with a shallow surface, a mirror and drawers beneath, lit from above or from the sides. Lighting is the part that gets forgotten. A mirror lit from directly overhead casts shadows onto the face, which is the opposite of what you want. Lights either side at roughly face height are far more flattering and more useful.
What About Bedrooms With Sloping Ceilings?
Follow the roof line and use the low side for drawers rather than writing it off.
Loft bedrooms are where fitted furniture earns its keep most obviously, because nothing off the shelf fits at all. Full height hanging goes under the tall side, and the eaves take pull out drawers or shoe storage. This is covered in detail in our guide to awkward and sloping spaces.
Common Questions About Fitted Bedroom Furniture
Can bedside units match the wardrobes?
Yes, and building them into the ends of the wardrobe run is usually neater than freestanding tables. They share the same finish and take no additional floor space.
Should the furniture go to the ceiling?
In most rooms yes. The gap above a wardrobe collects dust and stores nothing. Taking it to the ceiling adds a full upper tier, and in older houses with tall ceilings that can be a substantial amount of extra storage.
Can you build around a chimney breast?
Yes, and it is one of the most common bedroom briefs. The two alcoves are almost never the same width, so each side is measured and built separately rather than as a matched pair.
What about internal lighting?
LED strip inside the wardrobe, triggered by opening the door, is inexpensive when built in and genuinely useful in a deep run. It is much harder to add afterwards.
Planning Your Room
Before a design visit it helps to know roughly what you need to store: how much is hanging versus folded, whether shoes need dedicated space, and whether the room has to do anything besides being a bedroom.
See our beds and bedroom furniture page for examples, our fitted wardrobes for door styles and finishes, or book a free design visit and we will plan the whole room with you.
