If you have the budget for it, you should buy better quality fitted bedroom wardrobes and get the installed professionally. But if your finances are tight, you can still save a lot by buying and installing cheap fitted bedroom wardrobes yourself. We will not go into detailed procedures here, but will look at some generalities.

First, make sure you have the tools you need. Best to borrow or rent some kind of multi-tool. Something like the Fein or Bosch power tool is good – you can cut wood with it, you can drill holes and you can also do polishing, sanding and scraping. Make sure you buy spare attachments for this purpose – if you are not familiar with the tool, you will wear them out faster than expected, and you may even break them. You will probably need good quality glue – at least wood-on-wood, and wood-on-whatever your wall is made of. You will want some clamps to use with the glue, and you need a decent work-bench, both for the gluing and the wood-cutting. You’ll also want some kind of putty to fill in holes in your walls and floors – make sure you buy the right type for the material of the surface.

Once you have your tools ready, you need to prepare the wall, floor and ceiling where you intend to have your bedroom wardrobes fitted. Use the power tool with the scraping, grinding or sanding attachment to get rid of any organic stuff like wallpaper or carpets. If you leave that in place, they will grow mold and other nasty stuff in the darkness after you install your wardrobe. Once you have your walls, ceiling and floor bare, fill in any gaps and holes with the putty. Leave the stuff to dry while you make your measurements.

Cut the scribing panels to size, using the power tool with the wood-cutting attachment, based on your measurements. Cut them a little larger, and use the polishing attachment to reduce them to the right size during the final fitting. Once you are done here, you can put the carcase, i.e. the wardrobe interior together. Follow the diagrams in the instruction sheet, and place all the parts on the floor in the proper relation with each other. Only start the assembly when you have everything laid out clearly, otherwise you may end up with some panels facing the wrong way when you do the assembly. You can then screw them together and place the whole carcase against the wall. Because you bought a cheap wardrobe, you may need to re-inforce some of the joints with glue before you screw them together. That’s another reason you want the clamp and work-bench. Do remember to let all the glued parts dry properly.

Depending on the design of the fitted wardrobe you bought, you may need to drill holes in your wall to screw or bolt the carcase in securely. Make sure the hole you drill is slightly smaller than the diameter of the screw. From embarrassing experience when I was learning carpentry in school, it is a common mistake to use a drill bit that is too large. Once your carcase is fitted securely, you can put in the scribing panels. Once again, how you do that depends on the design of the wardrobe you bought. But one common fixture is to use an L-shaped piece of metal with holes in it. You then screw one end into the scribing panel, and the other end into the wall, ceiling and/or floor. Finally, fit the door in, which may entail additional drilling and screwing if you have a hinged door.

This is just a summary. If you have “played” handyman before, there is nothing new to you – mostly common sense. But if it all seems overwhelming, maybe you ought to pay to get your installation done professionally.

Are you shopping for fitted bedroom furniture? Have you become confused by the plethora of different options and bedroom furniture designs? Have you been doing comparison shopping and become mired in a morass of conflicting data? Are you wondering what is the difference between Brand X bedroom furniture collection 123, Brand X bedroom furniture collection 124 and Brand Y bedroom furniture collection 999 – they look the same to you, the prices are in a similar range, and the detailed write-up also reads the same – so what’s the trick? Honestly, buying bedroom furniture is confusing and expensive, and sometimes you need someone to hold you by the hand. Here is an easy guide to help you choose the furniture you need.

Before you do any kind of price research on fitted bedroom furniture, ask yourself these four questions:

• When do you need this furniture?
• What level of quality do you need?
• What is your budget?
• Is your bedroom a regular shape with squared-off corners or are there odd-shaped obstructions in the way?

Now, at this point many people like to do comparison shopping for bedroom furniture online. My advice is: Don’t bother unless you are looking for cheap standalone pieces of furniture which you intend to replace in a year or two. Buying fitted bedroom furniture online is not for the beginner, and you are better off shopping at your local bedroom furniture outlet even if you have to spend more. That said, if you want to protect yourself from the salesman, you still need a little bit of knowledge yourself before you step into the furniture shop.

Let’s start from the top. Bedroom furniture designs can be said to fall into three different categories:

• Flat pack furniture
• Fitted bedroom furniture
• Custom bedroom furniture

Flat pack furniture

This is standalone furniture that you normally have to assemble yourself. You can safely buy cheap throw-away pieces online, but high end bedroom furniture should be bought from local bedroom furniture outlets so that you can examine the real quality for yourself. There are pre-assembled bedroom furniture packages, but these will cost extra to ship to your home. Some bedroom furniture retailers will also assemble the furniture for you once it has been delivered to your home, but this will normally cost extra.

The main advantage of buying flat pack bedroom furniture is speed. Especially for pre-assembled furniture, you could have a fully-functional bedroom ready within a week. If you need it even faster, you may have to pay the furniture shop for express delivery services.

The second advantage is price. You pay for the furniture and its delivery, and that is all. There are no hidden installation charges, etc. Flat pack bedroom furniture is easy to find in large retailers like Ikea, Targets and Walmart.

Yet another advantage is the flexibility and ease of making minor customizations. For example, you can buy a cheap king-sized bed without a headboard and footboard, then add a king size headboard later on when you have spare cash. You can add a bookcase style headboard if you need more storage space, an upholstered headboard to give your bedroom more style, or a carved wooden headboard to add elegance.

Fitted bedroom furniture

This is furniture that is fitted to your bedroom. It maximizes the usage of your available space. Many master bedroom furniture sets are actually fitted bedroom furniture. For this kind of furniture, the centerpiece of your bedroom is usually the wardrobe – it almost always stretches from floor to ceiling, and may even stretch from wall to wall.

Your best choice for buying fitted bedroom furniture is to pay a visit to your local bedroom furniture outlets – the closer to your home, the better. Why? Because the furniture needs to be fitted to your home, and you want to find someone who has actually installed the same furniture set you chose in a house similar to yours. Generally speaking, this is not something you want to do yourself … definitely not the first time.

The main advantage of fitted bedroom furniture has already been stated – it optimizes the use of your bedroom space. The disadvantages are the increased expense and complication. You may also need to wait some time for the furniture company’s technicians to become available. When shopping for bedroom furniture packages of this kind, you really want to borrow the expertise of the salesman selling it. You need to show him photos of your bedroom and get his advice on what to buy.

Custom bedroom furniture

In some places, they call this bespoke bedroom furniture. The furniture is customized to your bedroom and some parts may even be built from scratch. In many parts of industrialized nations, custom bedroom furniture is the most expensive type of furniture to buy. It also takes the most time from purchase to final delivery and assembly.

Where can you buy custom bedroom furniture? That depends on where you stay. If you live in a rural area, you should probably get it built by a good local carpenter. On the other hand, if you live in the middle of London or New York, you may need to pay an arm and a leg to an upscale bedroom furniture retailer.

The two biggest advantages of custom bedroom furniture are that is is pretty much unique to your home and it can make better use of your bedroom’s features than fitted bedroom furniture. If you live in a rural area where you can buy good cheap wood and hire skilled carpenters economically, this option can potentially save you the most money.

Buying fitted bedroom furniture, or any kind of bedroom furniture collections for that matter, is often a confusing experience for a beginner. Unless you are buying cheap single throw-away pieces of furniture, buying bedroom furniture direct from a warehouse or online is not a good idea. Especially when you are a first-time buyer, the experienced salesman at your local furniture shop is your best friend … at least, if you show him that you are a serious buyer and not just a window shopper.

Generally speaking, fitted bedroom furniture are more expensive than regular bedroom furniture. Not only are they more expensive to buy, but they also require skilled professionals to help you install them, something which costs extra cash. So why would anyone choose to buy fitted bedroom furniture?

The main reason boils down to the better utilization of space. If you live in an old house with large and spacious rooms, you probably have better things to do with your money than to spend it on fitted wooden bedroom furniture. You could use the money you save on buying better quality bedroom furniture instead (e.g. something made from real wood like oak bedroom furniture or pine bedroom furniture).

Unlike regular bedroom furniture designs, fitted bedroom furniture tries to make the most efficient use of every cubic inch of space your bedroom offers. Wardrobes would stand from floor to ceiling, and try to stretch from wall to wall if at all possible. Beds would have drawers and small closets underneath. Some bed designs might even go so far as to incorporate small drawers into the headboard and closets on top of the bed where the canopy might have gone.

Who should buy fitted bedroom furniture? Frankly, those who would most appreciate this kind of bedroom furniture collection are younger people who live in modern urban homes or apartments. Most homes of newer designs are built from smaller specifications. Houses are built on smaller pieces of land, and they are built smaller with less spacious rooms and lower ceilings to save on material. The same goes for apartment blocks – more storeys and smaller rooms to fit in more apartments, lower ceilings, small cramped 2-in-1 washrooms with a shower and toilet but no bath – anything that the construction company can get away with to cut costs and make more profit for its shareholders.

Imagine trying to find space to store all your belongings if you lived in a studio apartment or a one-bedroom apartment. Unless you live a very spartan and minimalist lifestyle, this seems extremely difficult. This is where fitted bedroom furniture packages come to the rescue. You no longer have to keep the belongings you use the least packed away in miscellaneous boxes stacked one on top of the other. You no longer have to stack boxes on top of your wardrobes. Instead, the floor-to-ceiling built-in wardrobes provide you with extra space to organize your belongings. And when you use space saving hangers instead of regular hangers, you gain even more space to store all your clothes.

When discussing fitted bedroom furniture, the wardrobe is arguably the most important part of the equation. While your bed may remain the visual centrepiece of your bedroom decor, the real core of your bedroom has to be your fitted wardrobe. A fitted wardrobe goes to much further extremes than an organizer closet. When looking at the brochures from your local bedroom furniture outlet, you might have encountered these three terms: full carcase built-in wardrobe, frame construction built-in wardrobe and sliding door built-in wardrobe.

What are the differences and which type is better? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. Having said that, there is one important constraint that can force you to pick one particular wardrobe design – the shape and size of your room.

If your bedroom is very cramped and you do not have enough space to swing open the hinged door of a regular wardrobe, you will need to choose a sliding door built-in wardrobe. Although they have the endemic problems common to all sliding doors, they do have two advantages to call their own: they are easier to install; and they are slightly cheaper than the alternatives.

If you have a regularly shaped bedroom with only squared-off corners and no obstructions, fitted bedroom furniture with carcase built-in wardrobes are probably a good choice. It could be said that they are the most commonly sold types of fitted wardrobe. They also have the further advantage that they can be dismantled and taken with you when you move.

If your bedroom has a sloped ceiling, is irregularly shaped or has an obstruction of some kind, your only choice may be a frame construction built-in wardrobe. Fitted bedroom furniture packages with this kind of wardrobe are probably the most costly type in the market. They are the most versatile in being able to handle nearly any conceivable bedroom shape. Unfortunately, they do not come with a backing panel so you need to prepare your bedroom wall before the installation. Overall, they are the most difficult type of built-in wardrobe to install.

Buying fitted bedroom furniture is often just one step removed from buying custom bedroom furniture. It is something which requires a lot of thought on your part. It is also something of an investment, because these types of furniture are difficult to take with you when you move. Not only that, but they can be costly to reassemble in your new home even if they fit.

Are you looking to furnish your bedroom? You have three main choices – standalone flat pack furniture (which may come as separate pieces or as a set package), fitted bedroom furniture and custom bedroom furniture. Choosing standalone bedroom furniture is pretty straightforward for most people – pick what you want, buy it, have it delivered to your home, get it assembled. While shopping for the flat pack may take a bit of effort, if you find that the furniture does not suit you it is possible to move it around or even get it returned. However, this is not the case with fitted bedroom furniture and custom bedroom furniture. These latter two types of furniture are a long-term commitment … almost like a marriage. You should put some thought in before making a firm decision. Once you have this kind of furniture installed in your bedroom, it is too late to say that you have buyer’s regret.

There are four main points to consider when comparing fitted bedroom furniture versus custom bedroom furniture:

• Availability
• Cost
• Looks
• Versatility

Availability

If you live in a mid-sized town, both types of furniture should be available to you. You may need to do search around, but the main issue is cost. If you live in a small town, your local bedroom furniture outlet may not have fitted bedroom furniture in stock. On the other hand, finding a good carpenter to build you custom bedroom furniture from scratch is usually not a problem. If you live in a city, it may not be possible to get affordable custom bedroom furniture. You may need to go to a high end bedroom furniture outlet.

If you want custom bespoke furniture, do not limit your thoughts to just wood. There are places where wood is not available cheaply, but steel is. A good welder and metalworker can do remarkable things with steel pipes and steel sheets. All you need to do after that is get rid of any sharp edges and paint it. There are many unemployed welders laid off from their factories when their companies shifted their manufacturing operations offshore.

Cost

Most people think that buying custom bedroom furniture is very expensive. However, this is not always true. When I was a child living in a small town, my family could afford custom-built fitted wardrobes but not the normal off-the-shelf furniture. The simple fact is that labor cost can be quite low in a small town. Custom-building furniture can be quite affordable if you have access to cheap but good quality wood and do not need a fancy design for your wardrobe and bed. It can be even cheaper if you mix and match your fitted wardrobe with good quality but “no brand name” bed and other small bedroom furniture built for sale by your local furniture workshop.

That’s pretty much what my parents did for my bedroom. The fitted wardrobe was custom-built of good quality wood and is still standing in its original form after two decades. But my bed changed with me as I grew up. In my teens, my father bought a study table from the local furniture workshop – it was built of solid but cheap wood with a veneer and had no brand name. It was a fairly popular item and the workshop built quite large numbers of these tables for their local customers. After my old bedroom was turned into a guest room, that table was temporarily used in my father’s new home office.

You may be wondering – shouldn’t mass-produced fitted bedroom furniture be cheaper? Unfortunately, no. Nowadays, with modern manufacturing techniques, the highest cost of making furniture comes from paying the company executives, renting/operating the furniture showrooms and branding/advertising. Making the furniture itself is no longer an expensive operation … not with the widespread use of cheap fibreboard, modern automation and/or offshore outsourcing to Third World nations.

Looks

With regards to custom bedroom furniture, if you have the cash, the only limits are your imagination. You may want to look at furniture magazines for inspiration. Professional bedroom furniture designers often have their exceptional designs published in trade magazines. Home decor magazines are quite popular and most libraries should have a good stock of them.

With fitted bedroom furniture, you have a limited menu of options. Mind you, some people still find the array of options quite overwhelming, but it is still a finite number. Just be aware that some options may need more time and may even cost extra. Check with your local bedroom furniture retailer before you commit.

Versatility

If you can afford it, nothing is more versatile than custom bedroom furniture. Do you have an odd-shaped bedroom? Do you need odd-shaped furniture? Is your ceiling an irregular height? If you answered yes to any of the preceding questions, standard fitted bedroom furniture packages may not be suitable.

That said, most modern homes (especially urban apartments) are built using a cookie-cutter design. You can almost always expect certain common shapes, themes and dimensions. That means a standard fitted bedroom furniture collection will work for most people.

So what should you choose – mass produced fitted bedroom furniture or bespoke custom bedroom furniture? As you can see from the discussion above, the two biggest issues for most people are the relative availability and cost of these two different options. If you live in a large city, you will probably by buying fitted bedroom furniture whether you like it or not. If you live in a mid-sized or smaller town and do not need branded furniture, your options are surprisingly much wider.

Some people like to buy their fitted bedroom furniture online. They feel that they can find bargain bedroom furniture more easily. While this may be true for standalone bedroom furniture packages, fitted furniture often requires a certain amount of customization to be done by the manufacturer’s technicians. This is especially the case if you live in older homes or in the countryside, where you rarely encounter the cookie-cutter architecture commonly found in urban apartments.

So the first shopping tip for buying fitted bedroom furniture is don’t buy online. Mind you, window shopping for ideas and inspiration is fine. So is comparison shopping for bedroom furniture online to get an idea of the prices in the market. But when it is time to choose the bedroom furniture designs you want, it is best to do some real footwork and visit your local bedroom furniture outlets.

Good bedroom furniture retailers have experienced salesmen and staff on hand who can give you advice on the fitted bedroom furniture they sell. They know the right questions to ask you to determine if a particular bedroom furniture collection is a good fit for your bedroom. Even better, some of them may have helped install the furniture package or design you have shortlisted into a house that has a similar design to your home. They can tell you if they ran into any problems and suggest an alternative fitted bedroom furniture package.

If this is not your first time buying fitted bedroom furniture and you have a handyman in the house, you can get great savings by visiting a bedroom furniture warehouse. While most of them do not often open their doors to the public, there are times when they put their discontinued bedroom furniture on sale. If you know what you are doing, you can find some high quality bedroom furniture for a steal and pay a nominal additional price to get it shipped home. After that, you can perform your own customizations and fitting for free.

Some people who live in more rural areas find that they can get cheaper custom bedroom furniture than buying from their local bedroom furniture outlet. This is something you should seriously consider if you know of some skilled carpenters or furniture craftsmen who have local workshops. By cutting out all the middlemen and buying the required wood yourself, you can get your own fitted solid wood bedroom furniture built at an affordable price. This can be a very attractive option when you consider that most discount bedroom furniture is made from fibreboard which is less hardy than real good quality wood.

Many people go to a bedroom furniture sale with the intention of buying something if they find something that looks nice and fits their budget. However, more than a few of them end up regretting their haste when they receive their new furniture and discover that it does not fit. When you go shopping for fitted bedroom furniture, you need to go prepared. Look at your bedroom and determine where you are missing something important piece of furniture. Take copious photos of your bedroom, concentrating on the areas where you want the new piece of furniture to go. Take measurements and jot them down on the backs of the more relevant photos. When you finally visit the showroom, bring your measuring tape and the photos along with you.

If you really find something you like, look through your photos and try to imagine how the furniture in the showroom would look in your bedroom. If you still like what you see, pull out your measuring tape and measure the size of the furniture. Compare these measurements to the notes you jotted down at the back of your photos. Will they really fit?

Is this a lot of work? You bet it is. But then buying fine bedroom furniture is an investment. Fitted high end bedroom furniture is something that can last you for many decades. Don’t you think it is worth spending a little more time and effort to do it right your first attempt? Even if you are only buying cheap fibreboard furniture, how many of you can afford to go back and correct your mistakes? Do you really have so much free time after work to return your newly bought furniture and get a new set of bedroom furniture? Do you have the spare cash to pay for the return? Do you have the time (and maybe money) to get the replacement furniture delivered and installed?

Buying fitted bedroom furniture is a lot of hard work. It needs a certain amount of knowledge, experience and skill. If you do not personally have this expertise, buying bedroom furniture direct is not a good choice. Sometimes, paying for other people’s expertise can be cheaper in the long run.

Do you think long term or do you think short term? Is saving $100 today more important to you than saving $500 over 10 years? These are important questions you need to ask yourself when you buy fitted bedroom furniture. The answer to this question determines what is truly bargain bedroom furniture for you.

Generally speaking, finding a short-term bargain requires different strategies than finding a long-term bargain. A short-term bargain is much cheaper today but may not last more than a year or two. On the other hand, a long-term bargain is usually more expensive but should last you five to ten years of careful use.

Do you say that you are always careful with your belongings and there is no reason why even cheap fitted bedroom furniture should not last you quite a number of years? You might be right, but you would be surprised at how flimsy some cheap furniture can be. Not only that, but no one can be careful all the time. All it needs is one careless mistake and you could badly damage your furniture, especially if it is not made in a robust manner.

Even more importantly, bedroom furniture can see surprisingly hard use. For example, let’s take a look at your bed. How often do you get on and off your bed? Do you take an afternoon nap? Do you occupy that bed alone or does your significant other (or child) share that bed? Do you read a book in bed before going to sleep? Do you wake up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water or visit the washroom? Do you sleep peacefully or do you thrash around in your sleep? Every time some activity occurs (e.g. getting into bed, getting out of bed or thrashing violently because of a nightmare), you cause extra stress to the joints of your bed.

The same goes for the wardrobe of your fitted bedroom furniture. How often do you use your wardrobe? Most people answer that they only use it twice a day – when they dress for work and when they wash up after getting home. But is this really true? If other family members have access to your bedroom and are able to open and close the doors of your wardrobe, this could be much more often than you think. This is especially the case if you have kids and they play hide-and-seek. Even if there are no children in your home, do you only keep your clothes in your wardrobe, or do you keep the entire family’s bedlinen, replacement blankets and bath towels, etc. in there as well? Many people are surprised at how much wear and tear their wardrobes actually see in their daily lives.

This is not to say cheap fitted bedroom furniture will not last you a long time. But many people greatly underestimate how much they use their bedroom furniture. Many people will visit their local bedroom furniture outlet and gloss over the impact of some flimsy parts if the price is right. If you have carefully looked at how much you actually use your bedroom furniture before deciding to ignore a few poorly made parts, then that is a reasonable calculated risk. But if you have underestimated how much wear and tear you put your furniture through everyday, your bargain bedroom furniture may fall apart much sooner than you expected.

This is one major reason I cannot recommend buying bedroom furniture online. There is no way for you to evaluate the quality of the fitted bedroom furniture you intend to buy, so how do you judge whether or not it will survive the kind of abuse you will put it through? This is especially important when buying fitted bedroom furniture because you cannot easily replace a broken piece. This is even more important when you consider that most bedroom furniture on sale is being sold at a steep discount because the line has been discontinued by the manufacturer.

So where are the best places to look for bargain fitted bedroom furniture? This largely depends on where you stay. In some places, for example many rural locations, you can easily find cheap, good-quality wood as well as skilled carpenters willing to work cheap. In these places, getting custom bedroom furniture built might well be cheaper than buying fitted bedroom furniture from a retailer.

Of course, if you live in the city, this is extremely unlikely. In this case, you would need to wait for a clearance bedroom furniture sale from your nearby bedroom furniture retailers. If you need the furniture in a hurry, you may need to give up the idea of buying fitted bedroom furniture. The furniture company (whether it is the retailer or the manufacturer itself) is not going to give you priority when sending their people over to deliver and fit your new bedroom furniture.

As you can see, buying fitted bedroom furniture at a bargain is more complicated than most people think. Unlike single small items like a nightstand or an extra storage chest, buying bedroom furniture direct from the factory or from the bedroom furniture warehouse is usually not a viable option.