What does a fitted wardrobe cost to build?
A three-module fitted wardrobe run 2900mm wide and 2400mm tall costs about €1,466 in workshop cost: €800 of board across 11 sheets, €214 of hardware, €53 of edgebanding and €399 of shop time. A single 1000mm wardrobe on its own costs €1,135 — three quarters as much for a third of the cabinetry.
Workshop cost — material, hardware and shop time at sample Belgian supplier prices, before overhead or margin.
The run being priced
Three modules against one wall, 2400mm tall and 600mm deep, scribed to the wall at both ends and along the ceiling: a 600mm wardrobe with a door and a hanging rail, a 600mm open cabinet with six shelves, and a 450mm bank of four drawers. Carcasses in 18mm melamine-faced chipboard, fronts in lacquered MDF, 8mm HDF backs in a groove.
| Line | EUR | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Board — 11 sheets | 799.99 | Every panel, filler and the kickboard, nested together |
| Edgebanding | 53.40 | Every exposed edge except the grooved back |
| Hardware | 213.90 | Hinges, slides, handles, feet, connectors, rail and supports |
| Shop time | 286.50 | Cutting, banding, drilling, assembly |
| On-site install | 112.50 | Levelling and scribing the run in |
| Total | 1,466.29 | Workshop cost |
Per cabinet
| Cabinet | Board share | Hardware | Labour | Subtotal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 600 wardrobe, door + rail | 238.08 | 53.50 | 92.25 | 393.88 |
| 600 open, six shelves | 182.14 | 16.20 | 67.50 | 279.53 |
| 450 drawer bank, four drawers | 318.42 | 144.20 | 126.75 | 611.24 |
The drawer bank is the expensive cabinet and it is the narrowest one. Four drawers means four fronts, four boxes, four pairs of soft-close slides and four handles — hardware alone is nearly three times the wardrobe's. Drawers are the single most reliable way to move a cabinetry quote, which is worth knowing before you offer them as a free upgrade.
Why one cabinet is not a third of three
The same wardrobe built on its own — one 1000mm cabinet, no neighbours — comes to €1,135, across 8 sheets. Three quarters of the price of the three-module run, for roughly a third of the cabinetry. The reason is board: it is sold by the sheet, and a single cabinet still needs its own sheet of carcass board, its own sheet of front board and its own sheet of back board. The offcut has nobody to share it with.
That is also the argument for quoting a whole wall rather than a cabinet at a time. Every module you add to a run fills sheets you have already bought, so cost per metre falls the longer the run gets — until the next sheet opens.
What a customer pays
None of the figures above include overhead, design time, delivery, or profit. A small workshop typically lands a customer price somewhere between 1.6 and 2.2 times workshop cost, which puts this run in the €2,300–3,200 range fitted. If you are pricing your own work, the number you want is the one above — with your supplier's prices in place of the samples.