Wardrobes in your bedrooms have different door opening styles- open-able door or hinged door style and sliding door style. Today in this modern world where space constrain is major problem, sliding door style wardrobe help save space with style.
With Open-able door wardrobes and reduced space availability, home owners had to shift the side table or other furniture in bedroom to access the wardrobe. But with sliding door or shutter wardrobes, home owners need not undergo any such headache and can easily access their wardrobes. Sliding door wardrobes are quite in trend these days. Sliding wardrobe doors take much less space than hinged or open-able doors providing enough space to move around.
Wardrobe Door or Shutter Styles
Sliding Door wardrobes have either have base sliding shutter system or elevated sliding or shutter sliding. For base sliding shutter system the wheels and runners are fitted at the bottom of the shutter/door. While for elevated or shutter sliding system, the door hangs from top where the wheels and runners are fitted on top.
• For wardrobes with base sliding shutter, a border is seen on all 4 sides that surrounds the shutter. While with elevated sliding shutter, the shutters are placed adjacent to each other where no border frame is seen and needed. This make the wardrobe appear more clean and stylish.
• With elevated sliding shutter, home owners can choose from normal to soft closing channels which is not available for base sliding shutters.
• Base sliding wheels and runners accumulates dirt that hampers the sliding movement of the shutters over short period of time.
• The type of channels, wheels and runners used for each of them i.e. base sliding and elevated sliding shutters are different. Consequently, the load bearing capacity of each differs. The load bearing capacity of elevated sliding shutters is quite high as compared to base sliding shutter style. An elevated sliding shutters can bear almost 80-90 kgs of weight while the base sliding shutter system can bear only 40-50 kgs of weight.
• Also the elevated sliding shutters are sturdier and durable as compared to base sliding shutters.
Though Shutter sliding hardware is a bit expensive than base sliding, but is most recommended for wardrobe shutters. For extra care I would suggest to get a “Brush” installed in-between the minute space of 2 doors, all the way from top to bottom. This will help against duct accumulation or getting inside the wardrobe.
Material Used for Wardrobe Shutters
The wardrobe shutters be it base sliding or elevated sliding are either made of MDF or Blockboard. Only 18mm thick MDF or blockboard is used to make wardrobe shutters. The thickness may increase by 20mm and little more, but a sheet of wood less thick than 18mm is never used for shutters.
The thickness of shutters made from blockboard are usually more than 18mm, reason being blockboard used is itself of 18mm which is pressed with laminates from both the sides. But one needs to be careful while choosing the laminates for inside and outside of the blockboard shutter, as difference in laminate thickness will cause the shutter to bend towards the thinner laminate side.
How to decide on shutter material
For wardrobe where the main frame is made from MDF, the shutters too shall be/are made of MDF material only. And for wardrobes where the main frame is made out of plywood, the shutters shall be/are made of blockboard with laminates pressed on it. This is because plywood is not as strong as blockboard and therefore not recommended to make lengthy pieces like wardrobe shutters, doors, panels, benches, etc.
What is Blockboard?
Blockboard is a wood based panel, made up of softwood strips/blocks (like mango tree or pine wood) that is sandwiched between veneers of softwood, hardwood or thin MDF or particleboard. At times two veneers sheets are used on each sides to make the blockboard stronger.
Home owner shall be careful while buying or having blockboard furniture. Many a times blockboard are made up of waste wood pieces which results in bad quality blockboard. Also once the blockboard is finished with edge bending on all 4 sides, it becomes very difficult to say if it’s a plywood sheet or a good quality blockboard sheet.
We therefore always recommend Home Owners to buy modular furniture from branded companies since they will always use good quality blockboard and other wood.
What is the best combination for hinged wardrobe? Ply carcasses and MDF shutters or Ply carcasses and ply shutters?
There are mix opinion on this. Many people make decision on basis of budget, if less budget then use MDF. Most have opinion that MDF is inferior hence should be avoided.
Can sliding shutters be made of plywood instead of using any type of boards?
depends upon size of the shutters, if very big shutters there are chances of bending, hence blockboards.
Hi is laminate layer in wardrobes on board and ply ultra toxic to the clothes kept inside that wardrobe ? Does it gas’s off formaldehyde perpetually ?
Everyone seems to be using laminates to protect the interior of a wardrobe … is solid wood wardrobes is the only option ? Please advise on health issues due to materials used in cupboards / what’s then the best material to construct one?
laminates are safe. use it for inner of wardrobe without any hesitation.
Should the back-side of wardrobe be also made of 18mm plywood or 6 mm plywood is enough?
12 mm is preferred for back.
For 7.5ft wardrobe doors, can i use 18mm ply for making the wardrobe doors or should i go for block board.? Doors are normal and not sliding. Ply used is greenply mr.
use blockboard, 18mm ply will become heavy & ply will bend in monsoon/rainy season
which are best hinges for normal wardrobe shutters made out of blockboard .L kabjas or autoclose hettich hinges. AND How many hinges per door.
Namaste ji
Is WPC foam board wardrobe door bending?
How can avoid the bend?
Is advisable wpc board use wardrobe sliding doors?
Long Doors are prone to bending. There are special hardware strips in market which avoid such bending issues in shutters.
I am not aware of WPC foam material doors.
Sir
Good afternoon noon
Our wardrobe size is 7×4
Two sliding doors are used the thickness of the block board is it mandatory/ for good life 25 mm block board
Pl advice.
Udaya ji, if possible go for blockboard. This will cut lot of unexpected issues. Normal plywood can bend due to weather changes. There are hardware measures which can be taken with normal plywood, but blobkboard is bets if you are using sliding & have big size doors.