Any advice on creating a dressing room please?

[Ifonlyiweretaller]

I want to convert a bedroom into a dressing room. It has an exiting custom built fitted oak wardrobe with attached desk area and shelving which cover one side of the room. However they were designed in haste, so although good quality they are really not very practical for me (apart from the shelves which are perfect for my handbags!) Once we remove the king sized bed there will be another full run of wall space.

I don't know where to start really - should i get a joiner in to try and make better use of the units I have, and also build me something to fit the other spaces, or should I start again from scratch?

I know Sharps and Hammonds do custom furniture, but am somewhat wary of them as I suspect it will be a 'hard sell' if they come around to measure up (and they would have to travel as neither is in our area).

I know Ikea are pretty good (and good value) with storage ideas, but I wouldn't know where to start with planning.

Has anyone any experience / advice they could give?

We'd start by asking you to sort your clothes into groups of what's folded in drawers and what's hung up - of the hung things what height are they - ie if you have 47 long ball gowns 3 shirts and 57 day dress's the wardrobes will be design differently to if you have 25 trouser suits and 85 gym Lycra outfits etc etc .

So look at what your needs are first, then engage either a design and supply shop or an independent who plans and then you should around - or head to ikea for a bit of a session with some of their staff or the online planning software !
Try to allow 10 to 30% expansion space ! And don't forget if you are petite you might want a set of steps to access high shelves !

Have fun!

*shop around. !! Bloody spell check !!!

Great advice OnePlan, thank you so much. A good point about my height - we had to have the wardrobe hangers lowered in the wardrobes in our room so that I could reach - and the top shelves are still way too high (another case of rushed design when we had the house done originally...)

When you say "engage a design and supply shop" do you mean like Sharps?"'or an independent".... Do you mean a joiner, or someone more specific?

Well there are independent designers out there who design remotely for you, so you can take one set of drawings to as many places as you like - and that way you can compare like for like - and this usually let's you save money as you can negotiate better ... but if you prefer to have lots of sales peeps visit you and design for you that's another way - just takes up a bit more of your time and usually they will all be different designs so you can't tell who's actually giving you the best deal price wise ! And they probably won't always let you keep the free design. And they are trying to sell you something too remember !
( some independent designers do too - I don't ! )
So you can see there's benefits to each .

Hello again OnePlan. More advice please: "there are independent designers out there who design remotely for you". Who are these people? How do i find them? And who would I need to use to get someone to draw up a plan of the existing room? It's not a huge room but has certain features which would need to be included in the drawings. Sorry for all the questions, as you can see I've never done anything like this before...

Have you considered using something like ikea Pax modular storage? I have this, and it's great quality at a fraction of the price of someone like Sharps. I've got two walls of various pax storage in my dressing room and it looks fab, plus is very functional. I'd definitely recommend it

Thanks Fedup. Can I ask - have you put doors on or is everything open? I've heard from someone that that whilst being open is more practical, things can get quite a lot dustier than if you put doors on. What's your opinion?

I've had dressing rooms in the last two houses I've had, one we designed and built ourselves from IKEA Pax and one we inherited with the house. The former was far superior. My tips:

• have more drawer/shelf space than hanging. I thought I would hang lots of stuff up but I don't, it's a pain. Much prefer shoving in a drawer!

• have good lighting. My current dressing room is ridiculously dark, and opening the wardrobe doors makes it darker. My IKEA wardrobes had strip lights which came on when the door opened and they were fab

• if you like a really streamlined look definitely have doors. You can get big wide 'open' drawers for shoving stuff into and then closing the door on it. I have open shelves in my current dressing room and they look untidy. Always. Would only look neat if they had boxes or something similar on them which defeats the point.

• think about where your mirror is going. Mine is against a wall with the window behind it so the light shines on it in a strange way

• make space for a dressing table and drawers if you can. I love sitting at mine!

Great advice Secretly, thank you. Lighting is likely to be an issue The window in the room faces South and although its a reasonable size, due to the position of the neighbouring house, the light isn't brilliant. We do have a ridiculous amount of downlighters but you can guarantee they will be in the wrong place once we've moved the bed out etc! (It was my sons room, so no real need for specific lighting areas etc)

I have to move the standalone mirror around the room depending on the time of day to make me look good!!

I'm really starting to look forward to this process now with all the MN help I've been given so far.

Opposite advice from me - I prefer hanging space with no doors to get in the way. Choose varied heights for different garments - for shirts you can have two rails high & low. Drawers(soft closing)below waist height - shelves above to maximise acessibily. Get an inbuilt dirty clothes basket with sections - I've gone for three - darks, lights & delicates.
Get a joiner, they'll tweek the wardrobes you have already, finish off the other side in the same style and then paint it all the same colour. Our joiner was fabulous, the bill was about £500 more than Ikea and so much less hassle and it fits our space perfectly.

Thanks TheHoldings. Funnily enough the joiner we used to shelve out a couple of cupboards & re-arrange the badly designed wardrobes in our existing bedroom, got in touch last night asking if we had any work for him as its a quiet time of year for him. Maybe its an omen.. He's great once he knows what you want, but he actually needs me to tell him what I want! .

Mine is open, no doors. The drawers are all glass fronted too. I like being able to see my clothes to remind me what I have. Dressing room itself can be closed with its own door.
Had similar at previous house but in darker location - we put in the integrated lighting available for pax and it looked fab