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Six-door fitted wardrobes in a grey linen-texture finish running wall to wall, with full-height bar handles

Bromley, Kent

Fitted wardrobes in Bromley

Bromley has the tallest and largest bedrooms of anywhere we work, particularly around Bickley and Chislehurst, and that means the joinery here tends to be the most involved.

Area
Bromley, Kent
Postcodes
BR1, BR2, BR3, BR7
From us
About 28 miles from Hayes and the furthest point across London we work. Allow an hour and a quarter; visits are booked in blocks.
Book a free design visit More on fitted wardrobes

About Bromley

Why the joinery here is not the joinery two towns over.

Plan of a Victorian bedroom in Bromley Looking down on a late-Victorian or Edwardian bedroom. A deep chimney breast projects into the room with a narrow, deep alcove either side. The window is on the outside wall and the door opens against the opposite wall. The wardrobes fill both alcoves, deep enough to hang across the recess rather than along it. 1m deep Window Chimney breast Wardrobe, hung across Wardrobe, hung across
Plan, looking down Deeper chimney breast, narrower alcoves. The recess is often deep enough to hang across rather than along, which is what makes these rooms worth the money.

Bromley, and Bickley and Chislehurst in particular, has a concentration of large late- Victorian and Edwardian villas built for City commuters when the railway arrived, and the room proportions are unlike anything in the interwar suburbs west of London. Ceilings of three metres and over are common in BR1 and BR7, principal bedrooms are frequently five metres across, and the alcoves either side of a chimney breast can be a metre deep rather than the 600mm you get in a 1930s semi.

That depth is genuinely useful: it takes hanging on both faces of a return, or a full walk- in behind a single door. It also means the wardrobes get expensive, because there is simply a great deal more of them, and it means the joinery has to hold its own against original cornice and picture rails rather than sit quietly under them.

Beckenham in BR3 is a step smaller and more mixed, with Edwardian terrace alongside interwar semi. One local point of confusion worth naming: there is a Hayes in BR2, and our base is the other Hayes, UB3 in Middlesex, about thirty miles away.

Almost every interwar semi in BR1 and BR2 that has been extended has also had the loft done, and in Bromley the loft room is usually the master. That changes the wardrobe brief completely: low eaves on both sides, a dormer on one, and the only full height wall taken by the stair bulkhead. Eaves units under the pitch with sliding doors across the dormer wall is the arrangement that works most often.

  • Eaves height and dormer position if the loft is the master bedroom
  • Where the stair bulkhead takes the only full-height wall
  • Cornice and picture rail the joinery has to hold its own against
  • Which Hayes the address is in, because there are two and ours is the other one

Also covering Beckenham · Bickley · Chislehurst · Shortlands · Petts Wood · Orpington · Hayes

Insurance

Fully covered by public liability insurance.

Big rooms are a different design problem

In a small bedroom the question is how to fit anything in. In a Bickley principal bedroom the question is how to make a five-metre wall of joinery not look like a corridor of doors.

The answers are usually the same three: break the run with an open dressing niche or a mirror, split the doors with a horizontal line that picks up something already in the room, and take the whole thing full height so it reads as architecture rather than as a very large cupboard.

The deep alcove

A metre-deep Edwardian alcove is the most useful recess in domestic architecture and it is almost always wasted on shelving.

Hang on the return as well as the back wall and one alcove holds what a whole 1930s bedroom wall holds. Put a door on the front and it is a walk-in wardrobe that takes no floor space out of the room at all.

Prices are the same in Bromley as everywhere else we work. For the ranges, taken from jobs actually done, see what fitted wardrobes cost.

Common questions

Asked often enough to answer here.

You are based in Hayes and there is a Hayes in Bromley. Which one?

The other one. Our base is Hayes UB3 in Middlesex, out by Heathrow, not Hayes BR2 near Bromley. It catches people out often enough to be worth saying plainly. We do cover Hayes BR2, it is just not where we start the day.

Bromley is a long way from you. Is it worth it?

It is about twenty-eight miles and an hour and a quarter, so we book Bromley visits in blocks rather than one at a time. There may be a wait of a few days for a slot, and there is no travel charge.

Our ceilings are over three metres. How do wardrobes work at that height?

Full height, with the hanging and drawers in the bottom two metres and a top box above for what you rarely touch. The doors either run full height, which needs good hinges and careful hanging, or split with a horizontal line picked up from the picture rail.

Our alcoves are a metre deep. Can we use that?

Yes, and it is the best thing about a Bromley alcove. A metre takes hanging on the return as well as the back wall, or it takes a shallow walk-in behind one door. That is not possible in a shallower alcove and it is worth designing for rather than filling with shelves.

Will the joinery clash with our original cornice?

It should not, if it is designed to stop cleanly below it and the top box height is set off the cornice line. Running joinery into original plaster mouldings rarely looks right and it is not reversible, so we stop short and leave the cornice intact.

How much do fitted wardrobes cost in Bromley?

The ranges are the same as everywhere, £2,000 to £5,000 for most jobs, but Bromley jobs sit high in that range more often than not, simply because the rooms are bigger and there is more carcass, more door and more interior.

What we build in Bromley

Everything below is fitted in Bromley homes, by the same man who measures it.

The next step

Arshdeep can be in Bromley to measure this week. None of it costs you anything.

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