Wardrobe design in Kenya

Wardrobes and joinery are part of our residential interior design work, and they share the same workshop and materials as our kitchen cabinets.

Wardrobe designs and types

The right type depends on room size, where the bed sits and how much you need to store. These are the wardrobe designs we build most across Nairobi homes:

• Sliding wardrobes: doors run on a track instead of swinging out, so they save floor space and suit tight bedrooms and rooms where the bed is close to the wall.
• Hinged wardrobes: standard swing doors give full access to the whole interior at once and cost a little less, as long as there is clear space in front to open them.
• Walk-in wardrobes: open hanging, shelving and drawer banks for a dressing room or a large master, with no doors on the units themselves.
• Mirror-front wardrobes: a mirrored door bounces light around the room and gives you a full-length dressing mirror without a separate stand.
• Corner and L-shaped wardrobes: turn an awkward corner into usable hanging space instead of dead space behind a door.
• Floor-to-ceiling built-ins: run the units to the ceiling so the top boxes hold luggage and out-of-season clothes, with no dusty gap on top.

Modern and simple wardrobe styles

Most clients ask for one of two looks. A modern wardrobe runs flat slab doors with handleless edge pulls or thin matte handles, in a plain colour or a wood-grain laminate, so the run reads as one clean wall. A simple wardrobe keeps a melamine finish in white or light wood with normal handles, which keeps the price down and matches almost any room. We also do shaker-style framed doors for more traditional homes. The finish you pick mostly drives the cost, the carcass behind it stays the same.

Designed inside, not only the doors

The doors are half the job, the inside is the rest. We plan hanging, shelving, drawers and shoe storage around what you actually own, so the wardrobe works day to day rather than being one long rail with everything piled on the floor. A typical layout we build:

• Double-hang section for shirts and folded-over trousers, two rails stacked, roughly 1,000mm of height each.
• Long-hang section for dresses and coats, a single rail about 1,400mm tall.
• Drawers for underwear, socks and folded knits, usually 3 to 4 drawers in a 600mm bank.
• Adjustable shelves for bags, folded jeans and bedding up top.
• Shoe racks angled shelves or pull-outs at the base.

Wardrobe materials in Kenya

The carcass is usually blockboard or MDF, which holds hinges and screws far better than raw chipboard. Doors are faced in melamine, high-pressure laminate, sprayed and painted MDF, or mirror. Melamine is the budget factory finish, laminate is harder-wearing and comes in many colours and wood grains, and sprayed MDF gives a smooth painted look for a modern room. We seal all cut edges and keep sturdier boards in humid coastal and ground-floor rooms so doors do not swell. The same boards and edge-banding go into our kitchen cabinet materials, so you can see and feel them before deciding.

Wardrobe sizes, room by room

A wardrobe needs about 600mm internal depth for clothes to hang front to back, or 650mm for sliding doors because the track sits in front. Rough guides we work to:

• Small bedroom / SQ: a 1.8 to 2.4 metre run, sliding doors, double-hang plus drawers.
• Standard bedroom: a 2.4 to 3 metre run, floor to ceiling, mixed hanging and shelving.
• Master bedroom: a 3 to 4 metre run or an L-shape, often his-and-hers sections.
• Walk-in: from about 2 by 2 metres of floor, open units on two or three walls.

Small bedrooms

Floor-to-ceiling built-ins with sliding doors turn a small Nairobi bedroom into one with real storage, without losing the floor to door swings. Compact rooms, apartments in Kilimani and Westlands and servant quarters converted to bedrooms are where fitted wardrobes pay off most, because every centimetre of the wall gets used.

Fitted vs ready-made wardrobes

A ready-made or imported flat-pack wardrobe comes in a fixed size, so you arrange the room around it and lose the gaps at the sides and the space above. A fitted wardrobe is built to your exact wall, floor to ceiling and corner to corner. It costs more up front but uses every centimetre, sits flush and does not wobble or shift like flat-pack units. Imported wardrobes can also be hard to repair locally if a track or hinge fails, while ours use fittings we stock in Nairobi.

More than wardrobes: joinery

The same workshop builds TV units, shoe cabinets, study and home-office units, vanity units and shelving, all made to measure from matching boards. It is the joinery side of a full home design, and it pairs naturally with our kitchen cabinets when we fit out a whole home.

How we work

We start with a site measure, then send a design and a price per running metre in shillings. Once you sign off the layout and finish, the units are built in the workshop over 2 to 3 weeks and installed on site in 1 to 2 days. You see the same process and timeline on every job, set out in the interior design cost guide.

Mistakes we help you avoid

• Buying a wardrobe that leaves a dusty gap to the ceiling instead of building to the top.
• One long hanging rail with no drawers or shoe storage, so the floor fills up.
• Sliding doors in a room too narrow to ever see the back half of the wardrobe.
• Raw chipboard in a humid or ground-floor room, where edges swell within a year.
• Forgetting the 600mm depth, so clothes hang at an angle and crease.

What a fitted wardrobe costs in Kenya

Built-in wardrobes run about KES 15,000 to 35,000 per running metre depending on doors, finish and internal fittings. Melamine sliding units sit near the lower end, laminate or sprayed MDF with drawers and soft-close fittings sit near the top. So a 3-metre bedroom wardrobe usually lands between KES 60,000 and 250,000, and a walk-in is priced by the metre of units around the room. We quote per running metre in shillings after measuring, see the interior design cost guide for how the full home breaks down.

In scope: fitted wardrobe design, custom joinery, TV units, shoe and storage cabinets, study units and shelving. Out of scope: free-standing furniture supply, curtains and structural alterations.

We design and build in our own workshop, so one team handles the measure, the make and the fit. See how we work and our pricing.