What to choose - a wardrobe or a dressing room? Review + Video

Which is better - a wardrobe or a wardrobe system? Sliding wardrobe or dressing room - which is better? How do you like this puzzle with two unknowns? If you collect statistics on the desires of an ordinary person who embarked on the path of construction or repair, then the prize places go to the island in the forge and the dressing room. Times change, but people still want to build a small dressing room. In 99 out of 100 cases, this room will appear as part of a dream home, without which it is simply impossible to live.

But what to do? We propose to consider all the advantages and disadvantages of miniature wardrobes, as well as compare them with standard wardrobes.

General information

Moreover, the experience is based on 10 years of active use of both objects, which have practically the same dimensions, volume and internal content.

Believe me, personal experience is the best friend when it comes to making decisions and when planning space by customers when choosing a dressing room and cabinet. In every house / apartment, regardless of size, one should think over a place where it will be possible to store everything that was "acquired by back-breaking labor." In the wake of such a topic, we will share with you professional conclusions, in favor of which it is worth making a choice.

Mini-dressing room in the apartment

Probably every woman dreams of a dressing room. But this dream begins to crumble if the apartment plan says there is no place.

Often there are 1-2 walls in an apartment for arranging normal, spacious wardrobes, but not for a dressing room in the full sense of the word.

Dressing room is a service room in an apartment or house, in which storage systems for shoes, clothes and accessories are located. It is a perfectly lit space (separate from the rest of the rooms, closed) with an entrance door, and sometimes even a window.

Conditions for creating a real dressing room:

• All storage systems, namely cabinets, shelves and hangers should be placed as conveniently as possible for use.
• A person should be comfortable and safe to move between all storage systems.

• As professional experience has shown, the minimum width of the dressing room should be at least 1.5 meters. The fact is that 0.6 meters will be occupied by things on a hanger, 0.9 meters will be occupied by a person who will move along the shelves and hangers inside the dressing room.

If we describe the dressing room in simple words, then this is the room where both for things and for a person there should be enough space, for example, so that you can swing your arms freely, spin around your own axis and not knock a fur coat from a hanger, and also do not overturn a suitcase on your head from the mezzanine. Even if in your apartment the dressing room does not go through any point, it is too early to get upset, and even more so, you cannot give up.It would be a great idea to make your own dream come true in the bedroom - to make a wardrobe with a depth of 1 meter across the entire wall, with mezzanines. In other words, you can make a comfortable miniature dressing room, which will be discussed further. To consider interesting options, you should enter into the search box in English "rеach in сloset".

You will find 1000 and 1 examples of very deep cabinets found in European and American homes. Explore! Translated into Russian, it sounds like "arm-length wardrobe" or "accessible wardrobe". We'll call it a miniature dressing room because it's a separate storage space that you can even walk into. In the layout of the bedroom, a space with a depth of 1 meter, a length and a height of 3 meters, and all this is allocated for a niche for a miniature warehouse of things.

Which is better - a wardrobe system or a sliding wardrobe? To begin with, we suggest considering the undoubted advantages of a miniature dressing room:

• Large space for placing the necessary things.

• Quick access - opened the doors and everything is immediately before your eyes.
• This is budget compared to full-size built-in wardrobes (especially if the filling is budgetary).
• Mobility and ease of alteration during the operational process - you can always change the number of shelves, the height of the hangers, add or get rid of unnecessary storage systems.

An additional bonus is that if you urgently need to put things in order in the bedroom, you can remove the entire "mess" at the speed of light in the dressing room. The doors are closed and the room immediately becomes clean.

This is extremely rare, but it helps a lot if unexpected guests appear. So that you can use the niche on three sides, you can "build up" the shoulders by 0. 6 meters on each side. The calculation is based on the fact that the hangers will go to these walls perpendicularly from both sides of the doors, and standard hangers have a width of 0.55 meters.

Niche opening heights are usually 2.4 meters. The upper mezzanines are 0.6 meters each, for storing things that are rarely used.

The inner filling can even be assembled by yourself.

In the construction market, in the department where there is everything for the arrangement, buy racks, fasteners and hangers. You will also need chipboard and shelves (preferably pine). You can make a plan and strictly demarcate everything - there will be a male half on the left, female on the right, and a common space in the middle. It is best to make the sides the same. In the center, we propose to put a chest of drawers for bed linen, and place shelves above it.

At first glance, this is ideal and the following conclusions can be drawn from a professional point of view:

1. A miniature dressing room is very convenient if there is a place for it and a niche will not eat up the space of the room.
2. A standard built-in wardrobe and a mini-wardrobe, under equal conditions, will still fulfill different roles in decorative and functional purposes.
3. The wardrobe system turns out to be roomy, and all things will be freely available - this is also an indisputable advantage.
4. For comfortable use, you need to carefully plan the interior of the dressing room.
5. Consideration should be given to the door systems in the miniature dressing room, or another method for closing.

Now some useful tips

Recommendations for arranging a miniature dressing room in the room

So, keep this in mind when designing:

1. A mini-wardrobe is best done in a ready-made niche, or you can build it yourself.
2. The depth of the niche should not be less than 1 meter, otherwise it will be inconvenient to use the dressing room. If the places are less than 1 meter deep, you should abandon such a decision and opt for a conventional cabinet with a depth of 0.6 meters.
3. The width of the niche must meet the requirements of internal filling, and if it is possible to build a niche along the wall, then do it.

4. The dimensions of the opening in the niche must correspond to the dimensions of the planned finished doors, or the technical requirements of the workshop where you will order the doors.

Dressing room ergonomics

Why the depth of a niche for a wardrobe system or a wardrobe (which is even better) should be at least 1 meter. The simplest ergonomics and mathematics will work here. 0. 55 meters is the width of ordinary hangers, and so that things do not rest against the wall, and you can easily hang both a dress and a voluminous fur coat, you should leave a space in the niche of about 0.

6 meters.

Further, approximately 0.5 meters is the usual depth of dressers, drawers for storing towels, bed linen and personal belongings. If you want to store T-shirts not on hangers, but in a chest of drawers, then immediately take into account its size and depth will play the most important role. From 0.

4 to 0.5 meters will be the standard width of a chair or miniature stepladder, which is needed in order to get things from the uppermost shelves (mezzanines). As a result, there should be 100 cm, that is, 1 meter for free space for a dressing room or a very deep closet between the doors and the wall.

Look at the photo where the cabinet is divided into zones:

• Top shelves, which are only accessible from the inside of the cabinet, because they are covered by a partition from the outside between the doors and the ceiling.
• Opening to the dressing room.

• Main storage area with shelves, hangers and drawers.
• Place for a person.

The photo clearly shows how much space must remain so that you can comfortably use the mini-dressing room. It is not necessary to store a stepladder or a chair for things from the top shelves inside if they will contain things that you rarely use.

Internal content

When planning a miniature dressing room, closet or large dressing room, all hangers, shelves and drawers should be placed correctly in order to use everything as conveniently as possible.

Comfort is manifested in the availability of things, an easy search for everything you need, the correct height and depth of each compartment.

The following recommendations will be relevant:

• Calculate in advance the number of things.
• Measure their length.
• Count the number of things hanging on the hangers, lying on the shelves and inside the boxes.
• Determine how you will store bedding, toys, blankets, and skates / rollers.

• What will be placed on the mezzanine.

Now let's talk about the differences.

The main differences between the dressing room and the built-in wardrobe

Consider objects with the same parameters - the length of the wall is 3 meters and the height of the ceiling is also 3 meters. Wardrobe or dressing room, which is better in this case? In the built-in wardrobe, it will be possible to store things along one wall, and in the dressing room, storage is usually located along two, sometimes even three walls. If the depth of the dressing room is from 1 to 1.

4 meters, it is logical to place storage systems on all the walls that are available. The most common layout of hangers and shelves is shown in the photo. Three meters should be divided into parts - conditional female, male and general, and each will take 1 meter in length.

1. The volume of a spacious cabinet with a size of 3 * 3 * 0. 6 meters is 5.

   4 m ³ .

2. The volume of a spacious miniature dressing room with parameters 3 * 3 * 1 meter is 9 m ³ . Due to unused space (for a person), the volume will be 6.5m ³ .
3. There is an additional drawback in the dressing room - there is, albeit a small, but dead storage area that falls into the corners.

Try to plan everything in such a way that everything is accessible even in the corners. Use pull-out systems, swivel and corner shelves or rounded hangers.

• For a miniature dressing room, you can make a convenient entrance and all things will be immediately visible.
• A three-meter cabinet will have at least 2 sliding or even 4 to 6 swing doors, and they are needed in order to find the right one from different parts of the cabinet.

Access to the dressing room is the largest area of ​​responsibility, and the comfort of use will depend on which doors are installed.

So, a little about professional experience. There was such a mistake as installing sliding mirror-type sliding doors. The story turned out that the measurer reported the need to install three doors. This is a major mistake, but let's look at everything in order.

Error # 1.

Choice of 3 compartment doors on 2 rails. It is best to make each door on a separate rail so that you can open them in different directions and they can move a sufficient distance.If you miss such a moment, it will lead to an extremely stupid mistake, namely that often you will need to "go" into the dressing room, and you will not be able to do it.

It should be immediately recalled that a space with a depth of 1 meter is not a full-fledged dressing room, since it will be impossible to enter there in order to move freely, wave your arms and use drawers with the door closed. The drawers of the chest of drawers can be used if you are standing outside the dressing room.

For this reason, the opening of doors, the availability of all hangers, drawers and shelves inside is an area of ​​great attention and responsibility when planning. We conclude - if you plan to make a deep closet or a miniature dressing room, then the doors should be fully openable.

For this reason, only the following door systems should be selected for projects:

• Maximum 2 doors moving into the wall, so so that the entire niche (or even most of it) is open for access.
• Sliding 2 doors, when opened, exactly half of the dressing room will be visible.
• Each door on a separate rail.

• Swing doors, if the opening is not more than 1.5 meters (make two doors 0.75 meters each).
• Accordion doors.
• Do not put up doors at all and hang curtains.

Pay attention to one more mistake - in the bedroom you can make doors that will move inside the cabinet to the right and left by 0.6 meters of the pier, but the failure may be due to the fact that with the original planning of installing the door exclusively "inside" the opening, no mortgages were made inside the niche. A dozen years ago, when testing was just started, few people made doors with a height of 2. 7 meters. There was no talk at all about installing a structure of 3 meters.

As a result, a device with 2 rails and 3 doors is very inconvenient to use. Perhaps you think that there will be very few situations where you need to open from both sides at the same time, but this is not so.

Today it was a question of what is better - a wardrobe system or a wardrobe. The following brief conclusions can be drawn:

1. A miniature dressing room can accommodate more things in volume, but it will also take up much more space.
2. There are no blind spots in built-in cabinets and with proper planning, the space will be used 100 out of 100%.

3. A miniature dressing room will be cheaper to fill than a built-in wardrobe, but always remember about the price-quality ratio. We will purchase all the filling for a long period, and excessive savings can lead to more costly rework.
4. A comparison is always required - beautiful cabinet fronts or doors for a small wardrobe, which will be more optimal and more convenient in your particular case, as well as what will be budgetary at the moment.
5. A built-in wardrobe type will be equivalent to a wardrobe, provided that it is made to order and not purchased off-the-shelf. The finished design usually has size limitations.

6. A miniature wardrobe is always an individual order, and you can use their ready-made IKEA systems, provided that you have accurately calculated all the dimensions of the dressing room.
7. When planning a small dressing room, there will be many nuances that are discussed in the article. There are advantages and disadvantages.
8. A great advantage for new settlers will be that at first you can order only doors, and then put a temporary hanger for them, or vice versa, order filling, and while there is no money for filling, hang curtains.
9. The main disadvantage of the built-in wardrobe is that you need to order both facades and filling at once.

10. It should be understood that the dressing room is a compromise, since it cannot replace the full-fledged space called the dressing room.
11. The choice in favor of one of the options will depend only on the area of ​​space in which the wardrobe or miniature dressing room will be located. Only the laws of ergonomics in planning will enable you to tell you whether to buy a cabinet or cook a niche. Convenience of storage should not in any way affect the safety and convenience of movement in the room.
12. The last - the general decorative solution of the interior will also be the main factor when choosing one of the options.

Good luck with the repair, we hope you will succeed!