How to Prepare Your Bedroom Floor and Walls Before Wardrobe Installation

The room should be clear of furniture and personal belongings in the wardrobe zone — we cannot work around a bed that cannot be moved. Skirting boards in the wardrobe zone are removed before we arrive if the design requires the wardrobe to sit flush to the wall; we include this in the build if not already done. Any decorating — painting walls, replacing carpet — should be completed before the wardrobe is installed, except for the final snagging coat on the wardrobe reveal returns, which we apply after installation.

We check floor level and wall plumb at the measuring visit. If the floor deviates by more than 8mm over the wardrobe run, we build a levelling plinth or wedge the carcass base to compensate. We confirm what action is needed at the measuring visit. For new-builds in Bracknell and Wokingham, floors are typically within tolerance. For period properties in Windsor, Reading, and Maidenhead, floors frequently require some levelling intervention — this is standard practice and is included in our quote.

The measuring visit is where most installation problems are prevented, so it’s worth knowing what happens. I run a laser level across the floor of the wardrobe zone and note the high point — everything gets levelled to that. I check the walls with a straightedge and spirit level for plumb and for bowing, because a wall that bows in the middle needs a different scribing approach to one that simply leans. I measure ceiling height at both ends of the run, since a 15mm fall across three metres is common in older houses and dictates how the top panels are scribed.

I also map what’s in the walls as far as possible: a detector pass for cables and pipes, a look at where radiators and sockets are fed from, and a tap test to tell plasterboard on dabs from solid masonry from lath and plaster. Each of those takes a different fixing — masonry gets sleeved frame fixings, studwork gets screws into timber, and dot-and-dab plasterboard gets either long fixings through to the blockwork or purpose-made hollow-wall anchors rated for the load.

Anything you already know about the room helps enormously here. If the wall backs onto a bathroom, tell me — there will be pipework in it. If you’ve ever had a leak, damp patch, or rewire, mention it. Five minutes of conversation at the survey saves an hour of head-scratching on installation day.

On the day, I need the wardrobe wall completely clear plus roughly a metre and a half of working space in front of it. The bed can usually stay in the room if it can be pushed well away, but a cluttered room slows everything down and increases the chance of something getting scuffed. Empty the old freestanding wardrobe before I arrive if it’s being taken out — a wardrobe full of clothes is a two-person lift and an avoidable delay.

Access matters more than people expect. Full-height wardrobe panels arrive at around 2.4m long, and they have to travel from the van, through the front door, up the stairs, and around the landing. Tight winders, low landing ceilings, and half-landing turns are all manageable, but I need to know about them in advance — occasionally I’ll design a run with split panels and a joint precisely because the stairs won’t take a full-height board. If parking near the house is restricted, a suspended bay or a note under a neighbour’s wiper on the day makes a genuine difference to how smoothly things run.

I bring dust sheets and floor protection for the route through the house, but if you have a new stair carpet you’re precious about, say so and I’ll add a protective film runner as well.

There are two honest ways to deal with skirting in the wardrobe zone. The first is to remove it so the wardrobe sits flush to the plaster — the cleanest result, and the right answer for full-height fitted runs. I cut the skirting neatly at the wardrobe line with a multi-tool and make good the exposed ends, so the joint is crisp rather than ragged. The second is to scribe the wardrobe’s side panels and plinth over the skirting profile, which keeps the original skirting intact — sometimes the right call in a period property where the skirting is tall, moulded, and would be difficult to reinstate convincingly.

Coving and picture rails follow the same logic. Ornate original coving is usually worth keeping, so I stop the wardrobe just below it and close the gap with a scribed top panel, or design the cornice detail of the wardrobe to meet it deliberately. Plain modern coving in the wardrobe zone is generally better removed. Either way it’s a design decision made at the survey, not a surprise on the day — and if you have a preference, tell me before the cutting list is finalised.

Walk the wardrobe wall before the survey and note everything on it: sockets, light switches, radiator pipes, TV points, and alarm sensors. None of these is a deal-breaker, but each needs a decision. Sockets can stay live inside the wardrobe — genuinely useful for charging, a hairdryer, or wardrobe lighting — with a neat aperture cut in the back panel, or an electrician can move them before I start. Switches almost always have to move, since burying a light switch inside a wardrobe is no use to anyone.

Radiators are the one item that regularly changes a design. A radiator in the middle of the intended run either needs relocating by a plumber — done a week or more before installation so the plaster has time to dry — or the design works around it, typically by stopping the run short or turning that bay into open shelving above the radiator. I’d rather redesign around a radiator at the survey than have a client pay for plumbing they didn’t really want.

• Sockets in the zone: keep and cut access, or relocate before installation
• Switches: relocate — book the electrician one to two weeks ahead
• Radiators: relocate, or redesign the run around them
• Loft hatches and meter cupboards: must stay accessible — tell me they exist

A wardrobe against a cold external wall is the one situation where preparation is about building physics rather than carpentry. Clothes packed tight against a cold, unventilated wall surface can trap moisture, and in a poorly ventilated bedroom that shows up months later as a musty smell or mildew on the back panel. It’s rare, but it’s miserable, so I check for it deliberately: a moisture meter reading on the wall at the survey, a look at the room’s ventilation, and a question about whether you’ve ever seen condensation on that wall.

Where there’s any doubt, the fix is simple and cheap at design stage: the wardrobe is built with a back panel standing off the wall to leave an air gap, ventilation slots are worked into the plinth and top so air can move through that cavity, and the carcass material is moisture-resistant MDF rather than standard board. What I won’t do is board tight over a wall with an active damp problem — rising or penetrating damp needs curing first, and I’ll tell you plainly if that’s what I find rather than build over it.

The best sequence, if you’re replacing flooring anyway, is to fit the wardrobe first and run the new carpet up to the plinth. The wardrobe then stands on solid subfloor, the plinth line is dead straight, and you’re not paying for carpet that spends its life under a cabinet. If the carpet is staying, I fit through it — compressing it under the plinth and fixing to the floor beneath — which is perfectly sound structurally, though the plinth junction never looks quite as sharp as it does on a cut-back edge, and deep-pile carpet with soft underlay can let a heavy wardrobe settle a millimetre or two over the first months.

Hard floors are more straightforward: the wardrobe sits directly on them and gets levelled with packers hidden behind the plinth. Underfloor heating changes the rules entirely — no screws go into that floor, full stop. Instead the unit is fixed back to the walls and the plinth is bedded on high-grab adhesive where restraint is needed. Wet systems in screed and electric mats under boards both get the same treatment; the only thing I need is to know the heating exists before I put a drill anywhere near the floor.

Get the ceiling and walls painted before installation. Cutting in around a finished wardrobe is fiddly, slow work for a decorator, and there’s always a risk of paint on new sprayed doors. The one exception is the final junction between wardrobe and wall: once the unit is fitted and scribed, I caulk the perimeter joints, and those caulk lines want a touch-in coat of your wall colour afterwards. Keep half a tin aside for exactly that.

New plaster deserves a mention. If the wardrobe wall has just been skimmed, it needs to be properly dry before I fix into it and before clothes go against it — typically a week or more per skim coat depending on the weather and the heating. A mist coat and topcoats on that plaster before installation day is the ideal. And if you’re having the room rewired, replastered and recarpeted as part of a bigger refurbishment, the order is: first fix electrics, plaster, decorate, wardrobe, then carpet. Every time that order gets shuffled, someone pays for it in remedial work.

The most frequent one is fitting expensive new carpet a fortnight before the wardrobe, then wincing when I explain the plinth options — flooring last is nearly always the better order. Second is the forgotten obstacle: the loft hatch above the intended run, the gas meter cupboard behind the alcove panelling, the socket nobody mentioned that turns out to feed the whole upstairs ring. None of these sinks a job, but each one found on installation day costs time, and each one found at the survey costs nothing.

The third is over-preparing. You don’t need to hack off skirting yourself, patch old fixing holes, or line the alcove with fresh plasterboard before I arrive — homeowner DIY preparation sometimes creates more correction work than it saves, particularly skirting removed with a crowbar and half the plaster still attached to it. Clear the room, finish the decorating, tell me everything you know about the walls and floor, and leave the rest of the preparation to the person doing the fitting. That’s the division of labour that produces the cleanest result, and it’s what the free measuring visit is for.