Fitted bedroom furniture for hotels

Wardrobes, desks, luggage benches and the housings for everything else: the dimensions a fitted run is built around, the standards it should be tested to, and what changes in the accessible room.

Why hotels fit rather than buy

A hotel bedroom is a small room that has to hold a wardrobe, a desk or dressing table, somewhere for a suitcase, a television, a minibar, a safe and a kettle, and still feel calm. Loose furniture does that with five or six separate pieces and the gaps between them; fitted joinery does it with one continuous run, built to the room's exact dimensions, with services concealed and nothing for housekeeping to move. It costs more per room than catalogue furniture and takes longer to deliver, but it is also what guests read as "designed" rather than "furnished", and it is why upscale and boutique hotels almost always fit. The trade-off is flexibility: a fitted run is made for one room type, so the layout has to be right first time.

This guide gives the dimensions a fitted run is built around, the standards it should be tested to, and what changes in the accessible room. Finishes are covered separately in the materials and finishes guide.

Wardrobes

The number that governs a wardrobe is its internal depth. A coat hanger needs about 550 mm of clear depth to hang square, so wardrobes are built 600 mm deep externally as a convention; anything shallower forces the rail to run front-to-back, which halves the hanging length. Hanging rails go at about 1900–2000 mm for single hang (full-length garments), or as a pair at roughly 950 and 1900 mm for double hang, which doubles capacity for jackets and shirts and suits most short-stay rooms. Shelves above the rail should be no deeper than 350–450 mm or things get lost at the back. These are industry conventions rather than standards.

Doors are a design and a maintenance decision. Hinged doors need their own swing clearance (a 500 mm door needs 500 mm in front of it) but are cheap to repair; sliding doors save floor space in a narrow room but their tracks collect dust and a derailed door is a common maintenance call. Open hanging — a niche with a rail and no doors at all — has become popular in short-stay and lifestyle hotels because there is nothing to break, and it reads as generous if the joinery around it is good. Whatever the door, specify soft-close hinges or runners and ask for the cycle rating.

Wardrobes and any tall unit must be fixed back to the wall. The current non-domestic storage standard, BS EN 16121:2023, includes overturning, impact and loading tests and is the specification to ask for; its test methods are in BS EN 16122, and the older BS 4875-7 still appears on some contract specifications for storage furniture.^[2][3][4] A unit that passes the stability test on the bench still relies on the site fixing, so make the fixing part of the installation scope.

Desk, dressing table and chair

The desk is the one piece of bedroom furniture with a proper dimensional standard behind it. BS EN 527-1 sets the dimensions for work tables and desks, including the fixed working height and the leg-room envelope beneath it; the conventional fixed height that follows from it is 740 mm (a little under 29 in), and a hotel desk built to 720–760 mm with clear knee space of at least 600 mm wide and 500 mm deep will work for almost everyone.^[1] A desk that doubles as a dressing table needs a mirror, a socket within reach of a hair dryer or laptop, and a lit surface; a desk that doubles as a minibar housing needs ventilation, below.

Pair the desk with a chair whose seat sits about 450 mm high, which gives the 250–300 mm seat-to-underside gap that makes a table comfortable to sit at, the same rule that governs bar seating. If the chair is upholstered it falls under BS 7176 medium hazard like any other hotel seating.^[7]

Luggage benches and racks

Guests will put a suitcase on the bed if there is nowhere else, and a suitcase on a bed is the fastest way to ruin a bedspread. A luggage bench or rack at 450–500 mm high (roughly the height of a wheeled case) and at least 600 mm wide solves it. In a fitted run it is usually a slatted or upholstered shelf at the end of the wardrobe with the top protected by a wipe-clean material; in a loose scheme it is a folding rack. Either way, the bench is one of the hardest-worked pieces in the room, so specify a surface that tolerates wheels and buckles.

Minibars, safes, kettles and televisions

Each appliance has a manufacturer's ventilation requirement and the joinery has to honour it. Compressor minibars need free air in and out of their housing — typically a vented back panel and a gap top and bottom; absorption fridges run hotter and need more. A sealed cupboard around a fridge is the commonest cause of both noise complaints and premature failure. Safes are heavy and must be bolted through the carcass into something solid, which means the carcass under them needs a reinforced base. Kettle trays want a heat-resistant surface and a socket that is not behind the kettle. Televisions are fixed to the wall or to a bracket bolted through the joinery into the wall, never into the board alone, and the cabling needs a route that housekeeping cannot see and a contractor can reach.

The accessible room

Approved Document M expects wardrobe and storage doors in accessible bedrooms to open through 180°, with easy-grip handles on both hinged and sliding doors, and a room layout that keeps a 1500 × 1500 mm turning circle clear of furniture.^[5] BS 8300-2:2018 goes further on the joinery: the wardrobe should have an 800 mm-wide knee recess and no plinth so a wheelchair user can get close enough to reach the rail, with the rail itself and any controls kept no higher than 1400 mm, light switches at 750–1200 mm and sockets at 400–1000 mm.^[6] A pull-down rail is a reasonable alternative to a low fixed rail if the wardrobe is shared with a standing guest. The desk should offer the same 700 mm knee clearance as an accessible table, and the safe and minibar go in the bottom of a unit, not the top.

What to give the joiner

A fitted run is only as good as the survey. Before anything is drawn, the joiner needs the room dimensions checked on site (walls are rarely square, and radiators, sockets and skirting all move a fitted run), the bed size and finished mattress height, the television size, the make and model of every appliance with its ventilation drawing, the position of every socket and data point, and the finish specification. Ask for shop drawings showing every height from finished floor, and sign them off before manufacture: with a fitted scheme there is no "we'll move it later".

Common mistakes

• Wardrobes under 600 mm deep. Hangers will not sit square; the rail ends up front-to-back and capacity collapses.
• Sealed minibar housings. Noise, heat and early failure. Vent per the appliance manufacturer's drawing.
• Tall units not wall-fixed. Passing BS EN 16121 on the bench does not stop a unit toppling on site; fixing is part of the install.
• No luggage surface. Guests use the bed, and the bedspread pays for it.
• Accessible room joinery copied from the standard room. The wardrobe, desk and control heights are different; draw it separately.
• Ordering before the survey. Fitted joinery made to the architect's plan rather than the built room is the most expensive mistake on this page.

Specification checklist

• Wardrobe 600 mm deep; rails at 1900–2000 (single) or ~950 + 1900 (double); shelves 350–450 mm deep
• Door type chosen for the room width and maintenance regime; soft-close with a stated cycle rating
• Storage tested to BS EN 16121 / BS EN 16122; wall fixing in the installation scope
• Desk 720–760 mm high per BS EN 527-1, knee space 600 × 500 mm, lit and with reachable sockets; chair seat ~450 mm, BS 7176 medium hazard if upholstered
• Luggage bench 450–500 mm high, wheel- and buckle-resistant top
• Ventilation, fixing and cable routes drawn for every appliance; safe bolted through a reinforced base
• Accessible room: 180° doors, easy-grip handles, 800 mm knee recess, no plinth, rail and controls ≤1400 mm
• Site survey and signed-off shop drawings before manufacture

Frequently asked questions