Wardrobe doors come down to six broad styles: flat, profiled, panelled, mirrored, glass and slatted. Flat suits contemporary rooms and large uninterrupted runs. Profiled and panelled suit period homes and rooms with existing detailed joinery. Mirrored earns its place in small rooms where a full-length mirror has to go somewhere. Glass suits a display-led look and a wardrobe you are prepared to keep tidy. Slatted is a ventilation answer more than a decorative one.
This guide goes through each, what it is made of, where it works, what it costs you in practical terms, and how to choose one that will still look right in ten years.
Door style is a different decision to door mechanism
Worth separating these before you go further, because they are often discussed as one thing and they are not.
Mechanism is how the door moves: sliding across the face of the wardrobe, or hinged and swinging into the room. That decision is driven by the room, chiefly by how much clearance sits in front of the wardrobe. We covered it in detail in a separate article on sliding and hinged doors.
Style is what the door looks like: its face, its material, its detail. That decision is driven by the house and your taste.
The two interact at the edges. Very heavy panels are more demanding on sliding gear. Profiled and panelled faces suit narrower doors, which suits hinged. But you generally decide the mechanism from the room and the style from the house, in that order.
Flat panel doors
The default in contemporary joinery: a plain door face with no moulding, profile or applied detail.
What they are made of. Usually melamine faced board, which arrives from the manufacturer already finished in a colour, woodgrain or texture. Also available in polyurethane, sprayed to a flat finish, where a specific colour is needed.
Where they work. Modern and contemporary rooms. Small rooms, where a large calm surface reads better than a busy one. Sliding doors, where the panel is large and flat by necessity. Anywhere you want the wardrobe to recede.
What to watch. A flat door in a strong woodgrain or a bold colour dominates a small room in a way the sample does not suggest. Hold the sample at arm’s length. High gloss shows fingerprints and fine scratches; matt does not, and matt has been the steadier choice for a decade.
Handles change flat doors more than any other style, because there is nothing else on the face. A recessed or integrated handle keeps the plane unbroken. A surface handle becomes the detail of the door. Both are legitimate, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than taking whatever comes as standard.
Profiled and shaker doors
A door with a shaped or routed face: a recessed centre panel with a surrounding frame, or a moulded edge detail.
What they are made of. Normally MDF, machined into the profile and then sprayed with polyurethane. The shape has to be made before the finish goes on, which is why these doors are not melamine. Melamine is a factory-applied surface on a flat sheet and it cannot follow a routed edge.
Where they work. Federation homes, Californian bungalows, terraces, and any house with existing panelled doors, architraves or skirtings that the wardrobe should relate to. Also in contemporary houses where a softer, less austere look is wanted.
What to watch. Profiles collect dust in the recesses and need occasional attention with a brush rather than a cloth. A profile that is too ornate for the house looks applied rather than original, and a shallow, simple shaker profile is generally a safer choice than a heavily moulded one. Sprayed finishes can be touched up, which is a genuine advantage over melamine, but colour matching to an aged finish is not always perfect.
Panelled and moulded doors
A step further than shaker: multiple panels within a single door, or applied mouldings creating a traditional pattern.
Where they work. Period homes with strong existing detail, and rooms where the wardrobe is intended to read as a piece of furniture rather than as joinery. Paired with a plinth at the base and a cornice at the top, a panelled built-in can look like an armoire that happens to fit the wall exactly.
What to watch. This is the style with the highest risk of dating, and the highest risk of looking wrong for the house. Match the panel proportions to the doors and windows already in the room rather than choosing from a catalogue in isolation. Photograph your existing joinery and take it to the appointment.
More detail also means more surface area to clean and more edges to knock.
Mirrored doors
A mirror panel, either as the full door face or as an inset within a frame.
Where they work. Small rooms, where a full-length mirror has to exist somewhere and a freestanding one takes floor space you cannot spare. Rooms that are darker than you would like, where a mirror bounces available light. Rooms where the wardrobe wall faces something worth reflecting.
What to watch.
• Weight. A mirrored panel is heavier than a melamine one. On a sliding door, the track and running gear need to be specified for that load. On a hinged door, the hinges do. This is a design question, not something to assume is handled.
• Cleaning. Mirror shows every fingerprint and every speck of dust, and a wardrobe door is touched several times a day. Be realistic about this, particularly in a child’s room.
• What it reflects. A mirror doubles whatever is opposite it. A full wall of mirror facing an unmade bed doubles the unmade bed. Facing a window with strong western light, it can make the room uncomfortable in the afternoon.
• Safety. Mirror in a domestic setting is normally supplied backed or as safety glass so it holds together if broken. Ask what is being supplied and to what standard, particularly in a child’s bedroom.
A useful middle option. One mirrored door in a run of three or four gives you the mirror without the full-wall reflection, and it halves the cleaning.
Glass doors
Clear, frosted, tinted, reeded or back-painted glass, usually set into a frame.
Where they work. Walk-in dressing areas and rooms where the wardrobe contents are part of the look. Frosted and reeded glass gives the lightness of glass without full visibility, which is the version most people actually want. Back-painted glass gives a flat colour with a depth that melamine does not have.
What to watch.
• Clear glass means the wardrobe is always on display. Be honest about whether you will keep it that way. Most people will not, and frosted or reeded is the practical answer.
• Weight and framing, as with mirror.
• Safety glass. Same consideration as mirrored doors. Ask what is supplied.
• Reeded and fluted glass has had a long run in Australian interiors and carries more dating risk than plain frosted.
Slatted and louvred doors
Horizontal slats set into a frame, with gaps between them.
Where they work. Where ventilation genuinely matters: a wardrobe on an external wall prone to condensation, a room with humidity, a linen cupboard holding a hot water unit, or a coastal property. Also occasionally as a decorative choice in a coastal or Hamptons-style interior.
What to watch. Slats collect dust on every horizontal surface and are tedious to clean. They also let light, dust and insects into the wardrobe. Choose them for a ventilation reason, not as a default. If moisture in the wardrobe is the problem, it is worth establishing the cause before treating the door as the fix.
Combination doors
Most wardrobes do not have to be one thing.
Common combinations that work:
• One mirrored door in a run of otherwise flat doors
• Flat doors at the main level with a different treatment on the overhead compartment
• A frosted glass panel inset into an otherwise solid door
• Two finishes split horizontally, with the darker one below where scuffs happen
The thing to avoid is combining for its own sake. A run of doors in three different styles reads as indecision. One deliberate variation in an otherwise consistent run reads as a design decision.
Timber and veneer doors
Not one of the six main styles because it is a material rather than a face treatment, but it cuts across several of them and it comes up at every appointment where someone wants warmth in the room.
Solid timber doors are what people picture. They have real grain, real depth and can be refinished. They also move with humidity, which in a Sydney summer is a genuine consideration, and a wide solid panel that moves can affect how a door sits. Solid timber is most often used in framed and panelled construction, where the frame contains the movement, rather than as a single wide slab.
Timber veneer doors are a thin slice of real timber bonded to a stable board substrate and then sealed. You get actual grain with far less movement, which is why veneer is the more common answer in built-in joinery.
Woodgrain melamine reproduces the look at a lower cost and with the most stability of the three, and the better textured finishes are convincing at normal viewing distance. The tell is repetition across a long run of doors.
Where each suits: solid timber in a period home where the wardrobe is furniture; veneer where the joinery is a feature and the grain is the point; woodgrain melamine where you want warmth in the room without the cost and the care.
Other finishes you may be offered
Two more that come up in quotes and are worth recognising.
Two-pack, also described as 2pac, is a sprayed finish similar in application to polyurethane, cured with a hardener. It gives a hard, even, colour-matched surface on a shaped or flat board. The terms two-pack and polyurethane are used somewhat interchangeably in Australian joinery, so if a quote uses one and another quote uses the other, ask what the actual product and process is rather than assuming they differ.
Vinyl wrap is a thermoformed film pressed over a machined MDF door under heat and vacuum, so it follows a profile. It is a way of getting a profiled door at a lower cost than spraying. The consideration is the edges and the long-term bond, particularly with heat, and it is worth asking what the warranty position is on the wrap specifically rather than on the door generally.
When you are comparing quotes, the question that cuts through the terminology is simple: what is the substrate, what is the finish, and how is the finish applied.
How do handles change the look?
More than people expect, and they are usually decided last when they should be decided alongside the door.
• Integrated or routed handles, where the grip is machined into the door edge, keep the face completely unbroken. The cleanest look, and the least to catch on in a narrow room.
• Recessed pulls sit within the door thickness.
• Surface handles and knobs become the visual detail of the door. On a flat door they are the only detail.
• Push-to-open removes handles entirely. Worth knowing that it requires the door to be pushed, which means a mark where hands go, and that it behaves differently on a heavier door.
If the wardrobe is meant to relate to other joinery in the house, matching the handle is often more effective than matching the door colour.
How do you choose a style that lasts?
Some practical rules that hold up.
Relate the door to the house, not to a trend. A house with panelled internal doors and deep architraves will still suit a shaker wardrobe in fifteen years. A high gloss door in a colour that was current in a particular year will not.
Prefer matt over high gloss unless you have a specific reason. It marks less, shows less, and ages better.
Be cautious with strong colour on a large area. A colour you like on a sample is a different experience across three metres of door.
Keep the timeless decision on the doors and the current decision on the handles. Handles are the cheapest element to change later.
Consider who uses the room. A child’s bedroom door will be knocked, touched and drawn on. A high gloss mirrored door in that room is a decision you will revisit.
Look at it in the room’s light. Showroom lighting is not your bedroom’s lighting. Take samples home and look at them in the morning and in the evening.
Does the door style limit the mechanism?
Mostly no, with a few genuine constraints worth knowing.
Weight is the main one. Mirrored, glass and solid timber panels are heavier than melamine. On a sliding door, that weight passes through the track and rollers every time the door moves, so the running gear has to be specified for it. On a hinged door, the hinges carry it, and a heavy door usually needs more hinges per door than a light one.
Width interacts with style. Profiled, shaker and panelled doors are designed around a frame and a centre panel, and they look right at door-like proportions. A very wide sliding panel in a shaker profile tends to look stretched, because the proportions were never meant to go that wide. Flat and mirrored panels have no such constraint, which is part of why they dominate sliding door wardrobes.
Depth of profile. A door with a deep moulded face needs clearance to pass another door on a sliding track, which affects how the tracks are set out. Flat panels do not.
Slatted doors work on either mechanism, but they are structurally a frame with infill, so a very wide slatted panel needs to be built for it.
The practical sequence is unchanged: decide the mechanism from the room, decide the style from the house, then check the two against each other with the designer. It is rare for the check to force a change. It is not rare for it to change the hardware specification, which is a reason to have the conversation before the quote is finalised rather than after.
The next step
Door style is the decision most worth making with samples in your hand, in the room they are going into. Impressive Wardrobes offers a free measure and quote, where a designer brings the options to you and works through the style alongside the design for your space.
Book your free measure and quote, or call (02) 9796 1022. The showroom at 54 Canterbury Rd, Bankstown has door styles and finishes on display at full size.
