Choosing a maker/7 min read

Cabinet maker, furniture maker or joiner: who do you need?

The 3 titles overlap and are used loosely. The practical difference is whether the piece is fixed to your house, and it changes who you should be calling.

Cabinet maker assembling a veneered carcase on a workshop bench

The short answer

One question sorts it: is the piece fixed to the building or does it stand free? Fixed goes to a cabinet maker or a joiner. Freestanding goes to a furniture maker.
Cabinet makers work mostly in sheet goods and carcase construction. Furniture makers work mostly in solid timber and cut joinery. The tooling and the skills genuinely differ.
The titles are used loosely in Australia and none of them is protected. Judge the work, not the word on the van.
Hiring the wrong one costs money in 2 directions: a furniture maker quoting a kitchen comes in high and slow, and a cabinet maker quoting a solid dining table often builds a top that cannot move.
Fixed cabinetry can fall under building work in South Australia. Confirm the licensing position for your specific job with the maker before it starts.

Ready to price something specific? See cabinet makers in Adelaide or custom joinery in Adelaide.

The practical difference between the 3 trades comes down to a single question: is the piece fixed to the building, or does it stand free? Freestanding solid timber work is a furniture maker's job. Fitted cabinetry that becomes part of the house is a cabinet maker's, and building components like stairs, doors and windows are a joiner's. The titles overlap constantly in Australia, but the work behind them does not.

The 1 question that sorts it

Fixed or freestanding. That is genuinely most of the answer, because it determines the material, the tooling and the way the job is priced.

Fixed work is scribed to walls, levelled to floors and screwed to studs. It is built from sheet goods over a carcase, it is priced by the linear metre or by the run, and the hard part is fitting it to a building that is not square. In Adelaide, where a lot of the housing stock is pre-1940, that is a real skill: walls out of square by 10mm to 40mm across a 3m opening, deep skirtings, picture rails and a chimney breast in the middle of the wall you wanted filled.

Freestanding work has to survive being moved, sat on, leaned on and dragged across a floor without a building holding it together. It is built from solid timber with cut joinery, it is priced per piece by timber volume and hours, and the hard part is designing for movement, because solid timber changes dimension with humidity and a piece that cannot move will split.

What each trade actually does

Cabinet maker

Carcase construction. Kitchens, laundries, vanities, built-in wardrobes, floating entertainment units, office fitouts. The core material is sheet goods, usually a stable substrate with a veneer, laminate or 2-pack polyurethane finish, and the core skill set is accurate machining, hardware setout and fitting to site.

A cabinet maker's shop has a panel saw or a CNC, an edgebander and a spray booth. That equipment is the reason they are faster and cheaper at fitted work than a furniture maker will ever be.

Furniture maker

Solid timber and cut joinery. Dining tables, chairs, buffets, coffee tables, desks, bedheads, freestanding shelving. Mortise and tenon, dovetails, breadboard ends, grain matching across a wide top, and hand or machine finishing that is repairable.

A furniture maker's shop has a thicknesser, a jointer, a bandsaw, a timber rack holding stock to condition and a moisture meter. If the piece is a solid top that has to live in an Adelaide house, that last item is the one that matters.

Joiner

Historically the trade that made the joined components of a building: doors, windows, staircases, architraves, skirtings, and fixed cabinetry. In modern Australian usage "joiner" and "cabinet maker" are used almost interchangeably for fitted work, and a business calling itself a joinery shop is usually telling you it does built-in cabinetry as well as building components.

Where the word still carries its old meaning is heritage work. If you have a 1920s bungalow needing a matching door, a replacement sash window or a repaired staircase, that is a joiner, and it is not a job for either of the other 2.

Who to hire for which job

| Job | Who to call | Why | Typical cost basis | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Solid timber dining table | Furniture maker | Solid stock, cut joinery, a top that must be free to move | From $2,800 per piece | | Bedhead | Furniture maker | Freestanding, often mixed timber and upholstery | From $900 per piece | | Buffet or sideboard | Furniture maker | Grain matching, drawer boxes, freestanding carcase | From $2,400 per piece | | Freestanding entertainment unit | Furniture maker | Moves with you, needs its own structure | From $1,800 per piece | | Floating or built-in TV unit | Cabinet maker | Fixed to studs, ventilation and cable routing through the wall | From $1,800 per piece | | Built-in wardrobe | Cabinet maker | Carcase work scribed to site, hardware-driven | From $2,600 per linear metre | | Kitchen or laundry | Cabinet maker | Sheet goods, benchtops, appliance and plumbing coordination | Quoted as a run | | Alcove shelving or bookcase | Cabinet maker or joiner | Scribed to an out-of-square alcove, shelf spans that must not sag | From $1,400 | | Window seat, mudroom, banquette | Joiner or cabinet maker | Fixed, often built around existing structure | From $3,500 per run | | Replacement sash window or heritage door | Joiner | Building component, matched to existing profiles | Quoted per item | | Repairing an old timber chair or table | Furniture maker or restorer | Re-gluing joints, matching a historic finish | Quoted per piece |

Why the titles are used so loosely

None of the 3 is a protected title in South Australia. Cabinet making has a recognised apprenticeship, joinery has a long trade tradition and furniture making has neither in any compulsory sense, but nothing stops a business using any of the words. That is covered in more depth in how to choose a furniture maker in Adelaide, which sets out the 9 checks that work when there is no register to consult.

The result is that a lot of Adelaide businesses trade as "cabinet makers and joiners" and take on furniture as well. Some are excellent at all of it. The way to tell is not the title, it is the portfolio: ask for 2 or 3 completed examples of your exact job type, and ask for a detail photo rather than a hero shot.

What hiring the wrong one costs

Furniture maker quoting fitted work. They do not have the panel saw, the edgebander or the spray booth, so a kitchen or a wardrobe takes them longer and they price the unfamiliar parts with a margin. Expect a quote 20% to 40% above a cabinet maker on the same run, and a longer lead time.

Cabinet maker quoting a solid timber table. This is the more expensive mistake, because it does not show up at the quote. Sheet goods do not move. Solid timber does, and it moves hard in Adelaide, where a house on ducted refrigerated cooling can sit under 30% relative humidity indoors for weeks through February. A top fixed the way a benchtop is fixed, screwed rigidly through a fixed rail, will open at a glue line in its first or second summer.

The question that separates them takes 30 seconds: ask how the top is fixed and how it is allowed to move. A specific answer names buttons, z-clips or elongated screw holes, and mentions finishing both faces so they breathe at the same rate. Anything vaguer is a warning, and the finishes guide explains why the underside matters as much as the top.

The overlap cases

3 jobs genuinely sit in the middle, and either trade can be right:

A freestanding wardrobe or armoire. Carcase construction, but it moves house with you and has to hold itself square. Either trade, so judge on the portfolio.
A floating vanity or a floating TV unit. Fixed to the wall, but often specified in solid timber for the fronts. A cabinet maker with solid timber experience is the safest pick.
A large bookcase built into an alcove. Cabinet maker for the carcase and the scribe, but the shelf spans need furniture-maker thinking. A 900mm span in 18mm sheet material under a real book load will bow inside a year, so ask about span before you ask about finish.

Licensing: confirm it for your job

Building work in South Australia can require a licence held by the person doing the work or by the builder engaging them. Whether your job counts depends on what is being fixed to the building and what else is being altered, and it is not something to assume in either direction.

Ask the maker directly, and ask them to name the licence they hold or the builder they are working under. Consumer and Business Services administers occupational licensing in South Australia and is the correct place to verify what applies. For a freestanding table or bedhead this does not arise at all.

Once the piece is in the house, maintenance differs by construction as much as by trade, which is covered in caring for solid timber furniture in Adelaide.

Where to go next

If the job is fitted, cabinet makers in Adelaide covers how carcase work is quoted and what a linear metre buys. If it is a fixed run rather than a single unit, custom joinery in Adelaide covers window seats, mudrooms, alcove units and kitchen cabinetry.

Common questions

Is there an official difference between the 3 titles in Australia?

Not one you can look up. Cabinet making has a recognised apprenticeship pathway and joinery has a long trade tradition, but none of the 3 titles is protected in South Australia and there is no register that separates them. The distinction that matters in practice is the work itself: sheet goods and carcases, solid timber and cut joinery, or building components like stairs, windows and doors.

Who should build a built-in wardrobe?

A cabinet maker. It is carcase work in sheet goods, scribed to walls that are rarely square, with runners, rails and door hardware doing most of the engineering. A furniture maker can build one and many do, but the pricing model, the tooling and the fitting experience all sit with cabinet makers, and the quote usually reflects that.

Can one business do all 3?

Plenty do, particularly small Adelaide workshops that take whatever work comes. That is fine as long as their portfolio actually shows the type of work you want. Ask for 2 or 3 completed examples of your specific job type rather than a general portfolio, because the overlap in title does not guarantee overlap in experience.

Does hiring the wrong trade actually cost more?

Yes, in both directions. A furniture maker quoting a kitchen prices unfamiliar work with a safety margin and takes longer to build it. A cabinet maker quoting a solid timber dining table sometimes fixes the top the way a benchtop is fixed, which in Adelaide's dry summers is exactly how a glue line opens. The cost surfaces in year 2 rather than at the quote.

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