Quick answer
A made-to-measure wardrobe from a cabinet maker starts around $3,500 including GST for a standard double built to the room, and moves with width, internals and doors rather than with anything you can see from the doorway. The money is not in the doors. It is in how the space is divided — hanging heights, drawer banks, shelf spans that do not sag — and in the fact that a made unit fills the whole opening instead of leaving a 60mm strip of packing down one side.
Key points
- Made-to-measure starts around $3,500 including GST for a standard double; internals and doors move it from there.
- Wardrobes are the same trade, machinery and board as kitchen cabinetry — just a different room.
- Shelf span is the failure everyone can see: over about 900mm without support, a melamine shelf will bow under folded clothes.
- Double hanging beats a single rail for most people. Long hanging is needed for less than you'd think.
- If a kitchen is already being made, ask for the wardrobe in the same order — the setup and the delivery are being paid for once.
Most Auckland bedrooms built before about 1990 have a wardrobe that was framed by the builder, lined, given a rail and a single shelf, and never thought about again. It works, in the sense that clothes hang in it. It also wastes about a third of its own volume: dead air above the shelf, dead air below the hanging, and a rail long enough for a wardrobe of ballgowns holding fourteen shirts and a vacuum cleaner.
Replacing it is one of the cheapest changes in a house that you feel every single day, and it is the same trade that makes your kitchen. Same board, same edgebander, same hinges, same 32mm hole pattern. A cabinet maker does not think of a wardrobe as a different product — it is a run of cabinetry that happens to be in a bedroom.
Where the money actually goes
Doors are what you look at, so people assume that is the cost. In a wardrobe it usually is not. The base of a made-to-measure wardrobe is the carcass and the internals: the verticals that divide the space, the shelves, the hanging rails, the drawer boxes if you want them. Doors are a line on top of that, and a sliding door system is a bigger line than a hinged one because it is a track, a set of rollers and a panel that has to stay flat over two metres.
Our own configurator prices a wardrobe from $3,500 including GST and lets you add the pieces that actually change the day: a set of four full-extension internal drawers, an angled pull-out shoe rack, interior lighting that comes on when the door opens, a full-length mirror panel in a door. Each of those is a real cost with a real number rather than a package upgrade, which is deliberate — it is the only way you can see what you are paying for.
The internals decide whether it works
The single most useful change to a standard wardrobe is double hanging. Shirts, jackets, folded trousers and most skirts need about 1000mm of drop. Stack two rails and you have doubled your hanging in the same footprint. Keep one section as long hanging — 1600mm or so — for coats and dresses, and that is genuinely all the long hanging most households need. The default single rail across the whole opening is the least efficient arrangement available, and it is what nearly every builder's wardrobe has.
Shelves are where a cheap wardrobe announces itself. An 18mm melamine shelf carrying folded jumpers will visibly bow over about 900mm of unsupported span, and once it has taken a set it does not come back. A made unit puts a vertical in before that happens, or thickens the shelf, or supports the back edge. A kitset one gives you a 1200mm shelf because that is what came in the box.
Drawers inside the wardrobe rather than a chest in the room are the other change people notice. Full-extension runners matter here more than in a kitchen, because a wardrobe drawer sits deeper in a darker space and a three-quarter runner leaves the back third of it permanently unreachable.
| What's hanging | Drop to allow | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Shirts, blouses, folded trousers | About 1000mm | The workhorse. Stack two of these where you can |
| Jackets and suits | 1100–1200mm | Wants a little more shoulder room than a shirt rail |
| Dresses | 1400–1600mm | Most households need one section, not a whole wardrobe |
| Long coats | 1600mm+ | Measure the longest thing you own before committing |
| Shelf above the rail | 300–400mm | Bags and bedding. Deeper than 400mm and you lose the back of it |
Made-to-measure versus kitset, honestly
A kitset wardrobe from a big-box store is genuinely good value if your opening happens to suit it and you are prepared to live with a filler strip. The carcasses are the same melamine board a cabinet maker uses and the hardware is often the same brand. What you are not getting is a unit built to your opening, which in an Auckland house is the whole point — a 1970s wall that runs out 15mm over two metres will leave a tapering gap that no kitset can close.
The other difference is that a made unit is scribed to the wall and fixed to it, so it is furniture that belongs to the house. That matters at sale time and it matters the first time somebody leans on it.
Walk-in wardrobes, and when the room is too small for one
A walk-in needs about 600mm of clear standing room in front of anything you want to reach, on top of the depth of the hanging itself, which is 600mm. So a walk-in with hanging down one side wants roughly 1200mm of width minimum, and one with hanging down both sides wants about 1800mm. Below that you are building a corridor you cannot turn around in, and you would get more usable storage out of a well-planned reach-in across the same wall.
This is the calculation that catches people converting a small third bedroom or borrowing a metre off a bedroom in a townhouse. Measure the clear width first. If it does not make 1200mm, the honest answer is that a wall of made cabinetry will hold more.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a built-in wardrobe cost in Auckland?
Made-to-measure starts around $3,500 including GST for a standard double built to the opening, with internals and hinged doors. Width, a sliding door system, internal drawers, lighting and mirror panels move it up from there, each as a separate line rather than a package. A wall-length wardrobe with drawer banks and sliders is a different order of job from a single reach-in, and the honest way to price it is to measure the opening.
Do cabinet makers make wardrobes, or is that a different trade?
Same trade, same workshop, same machinery. A wardrobe is a run of cabinetry in a bedroom — the board, the edging, the hinges and the hole pattern are what goes into a kitchen. Any cabinet maker doing kitchens can make you a wardrobe, and most would rather do it in the same order as your kitchen than as a separate visit.
Sliding doors or hinged?
Hinged if you have the swing room, because you see the whole opening at once and they cost less. Sliding where the bed or a door is in the way — the trade-off is that you can only ever see half the wardrobe, and a slider needs a track that stays clean. In a small Auckland bedroom sliders often win on room, not on preference.
Can you build around an existing wardrobe frame?
Usually, and it is cheaper than stripping it out. What matters is whether the opening is square enough and whether the lining is sound. If the framing is going anyway, say so early — making good and painting after a strip-out is not cabinetry work and needs to be in someone's scope before the job starts.
How long does a wardrobe take?
The making is the short part. Most of the lead time is the same queue a kitchen sits in, so a wardrobe ordered on its own takes about as long as a small kitchen. Ordered alongside a kitchen it adds very little, which is the practical argument for doing both at once.
If you only change one thing
Double the hanging. Two rails at 1000mm instead of one rail at 2000mm is the cheapest storage anyone has ever bought, it needs no new doors, and in most builder-standard Auckland wardrobes it can be done inside the existing opening. Everything else — drawers, shoe racks, lighting, mirrors — is real and worth having, but that one change is the one people ring back about.