What a built-in wardrobe costs in Adelaide

Built-in wardrobes in Adelaide start at $2,600 per linear metre installed, and most land between $2,600 and $4,200 per metre. A standard 3.2m bedroom run therefore costs roughly $8,300 to $13,400. The number that decides where you land in that band is not the doors. It is what goes behind them.

Fitted work is quoted per linear metre because the cost tracks how much wall it covers. That logic, and how it differs from the per-piece pricing used on freestanding furniture, is set out in what custom furniture costs in Adelaide. The full specification detail sits on the custom wardrobes page.

What a linear metre actually buys

A linear metre is 1,000mm of wall width, floor to ceiling, including the carcase, the internal fitout, the doors and the installation. Here is what the rate buys at each level.

| Fitout level | Per linear metre | What is included | | --- | --- | --- | | Basic | $2,600 to $3,000 | Melamine carcase, 1 hanging rail, 1 top shelf, hinged melamine doors | | Standard | $3,000 to $3,600 | Double hang plus a shelf bank, 3 to 4 drawers per run, soft-close runners, sliding or hinged doors | | Detailed | $3,600 to $4,200 | Full drawer bank, adjustable shelving, 2-pack or veneer doors, scribed to the cornice | | Dressing room | $4,200 to $5,800 | Timber drawer boxes, glass fronts, pull-out rails, jewellery inserts, integrated LED |

The gap between basic and detailed is $1,600 per metre, or about $5,100 across a 3.2m run. Almost all of that gap is internal.

The internals cost more than the doors

This is the part that surprises people, and it is the single most useful thing to understand before you read a quote.

A drawer is a cabinet inside a cabinet. It needs 4 sides, a base, a separate front, a runner pair rated to at least 30kg, and enough accuracy that the reveals stay even for 20 years. A bank of 4 drawers is 4 of those. A pair of hinged melamine doors is 2 flat panels, 4 hinges and an hour of hanging.

On a typical standard-level wardrobe, the split runs roughly:

| Element | Share of the quote | | --- | --- | | Internal fitout (drawers, shelving, rails, runners) | 40% to 45% | | Carcase and installation | 20% to 25% | | Doors and door hardware | 20% to 30% | | Scribing, filler panels and making good | 8% to 12% |

Which means the quickest way to cut $2,000 out of a wardrobe quote is to drop 4 drawers to 2 and use open shelving instead, not to downgrade the doors.

The door cost ladder

Doors are the visible half and the half every quote leads with. The ladder runs in a fairly consistent order.

| Door type | Per linear metre | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | Hinged melamine | $380 to $600 | Cheapest, most reliable, needs 600mm of swing clearance | | Sliding melamine or mirrored | $600 to $950 | No swing space, but you only ever access half the wardrobe | | Cavity slider (door slides into the wall) | $900 to $1,500 | Needs stud work, so it is a build decision, not a fitout one | | Hinged 2-pack polyurethane | $1,000 to $1,500 | Seamless colour, chips at the edges, hard to repair | | Timber veneer, grain-matched | $1,200 to $1,900 | Matches existing joinery, warms the room, holds value |

Sliding doors are chosen for the wrong reason more often than any other item on this list. They save floor space, which matters in a bedroom under 3.2m wide, but they permanently block half the opening. In a room that has the swing clearance, hinged doors are cheaper and more usable.

One specification detail is worth confirming in writing on any mirrored door: the mirror must be safety-backed or laminated glass, not plain float. The relevant Australian Standards are published by Standards Australia.

What an old Adelaide house adds

Adelaide has a very large stock of pre-1940 villas and bungalows, and they are not square. Across a 3m wall it is normal to find 10mm to 40mm of variation, a floor that falls toward the outside wall, skirtings 180mm deep, a picture rail at 2,100mm and occasionally a chimney breast eating a corner.

None of that can be butted against. Every carcase end, every filler and every door panel that meets a wall has to be scribed: held in place, marked to the actual shape of the wall, then cut to that line. Budget $250 to $700 per wardrobe on top of the metre rate, and expect a longer measure. In a 2015 project home the same run needs almost none of this.

The genuine benefit is that a scribed wardrobe reads as part of the house rather than as a box pushed against it. That is the entire point of fitted work, and it is why the same money spent on a freestanding robe looks worse in an old room.

To the cornice, or a bulkhead?

Running the cabinetry all the way to the cornice adds $250 to $500 per linear metre. Stopping at 2,400mm and building a plastered bulkhead above costs $600 to $1,200 for the run, plus painting, plus a second trade and a second visit.

Full height is dearer per metre and cheaper overall. It also gives you a real top shelf instead of a dust ledge. In a villa with a decorative plaster cornice, the cabinetry stops just under it and a scribed filler closes the gap, which looks deliberate and takes about an hour.

Where the money is well spent, and where it is wasted

Well spent:

• Runners and hinges. A quality soft-close runner pair costs $60 to $180 and gets used tens of thousands of times. This is the part that fails first on a cheap wardrobe, and it is the part you cannot upgrade later without pulling the drawers apart.
• Drawer boxes over shelves. Anything below chest height should be a drawer. A shelf at knee level is storage you will stop using within a year.
• Adjustable shelving. Drilled shelf runs cost almost nothing extra at build time and mean the wardrobe still suits you after a house move or a life change.
• Lighting. An LED strip on a door switch costs $150 to $350 per run and is the single upgrade people mention most afterwards.

Wasted:

• Routed or shaker door profiles on a wardrobe that lives behind a bedroom door. They add $150 to $400 per metre and collect dust.
• Mirrored sliders in a room that already has a mirror. They add $200 to $350 per metre and lock you into sliding access.
• Soft-close on every single door in a wardrobe with 6 doors. Put it on the drawers, where it earns its keep.

A worked example

A 3.2m wardrobe in a main bedroom of a 1928 Adelaide bungalow, standard fitout, hinged veneer doors, run to the cornice:

| Line | Cost | | --- | --- | | 3.2m at $3,300 per linear metre (standard fitout, veneer doors) | $10,560 | | Scribing to out-of-square walls and a picture rail | $450 | | Full height to cornice, 3.2m at $350 | $1,120 | | LED strip on door switch | $260 | | Total installed | $12,390 |

If the same wardrobe went into a 2015 build with square walls, hinged melamine doors and a 2,400mm height with no bulkhead, it lands closer to $8,600.

Before you sign anything

Get the metre rate, then get the itemised list of what that rate includes. The 2 quotes that look $3,000 apart are usually 1 drawer bank apart. Ask specifically about drawer count, runner brand and load rating, whether shelving is fixed or adjustable, and whether scribing and making good are in or out.

If the job runs beyond a bedroom into a hallway, a study or a laundry, it stops being a wardrobe and becomes a joinery run, which is priced differently again. And if you are weighing fitted work against something you could buy off a shelf, the honest comparison is in custom versus flat-pack. For freestanding pricing logic, start with what a custom dining table costs.