Wardrobe Design Guide: Sliding vs Hinged, Depths, Finishes and Costs

About the numbers below: sizes come from manufacturers' published systems (IKEA PAX, Hettich), not from an Indian standard: there is no legal wardrobe size, and a carpenter can build to any measurement. Hardware prices are list prices (MRP) from Hettich India's June 2022 catalogue, so check current rates. Cost per square foot and budget shares are market ranges observed across Indian cities, from MOA's room-by-room cost guide, not published rates.

For most Indian bedrooms the choice comes down to one strip of floor. A hinged wardrobe needs clear space in front as deep as each shutter is wide, about 50 cm for a standard shutter, but it is cheaper and shows everything at once. A sliding wardrobe needs no swing space, but its doors add about 7.5 cm of depth, it opens only half its width at a time, and it costs more. Either way, plan a carcass about 58 to 60 cm deep, taken to the ceiling with a loft.

This guide covers the dimensions, internal layout, materials and hardware. For what wardrobes cost within a whole-home budget, see our room-by-room interior cost guide and the 2BHK interior cost guide for Bangalore. If you also want the wardrobe to follow Vastu, our Vastu guide for a new home covers placement.

Sliding or hinged: the short answer

	Hinged shutters	Sliding panels
Floor space in front	A swing zone as deep as the shutter is wide	None for the doors
Depth on the wall	Carcass plus shutter thickness	Carcass plus the track: IKEA's sliding doors add 7.5 cm
Access	Open every shutter and the whole width is in view	One half (or one third) at a time
Cost	The lower band per sq ft of shutter face	Higher: costlier track hardware and heavier panels
Best for	Rooms with 50 cm or more spare in front of the wall	Tight rooms where the bed or a door sits close to the wardrobe

A simple test: measure from the wardrobe wall to the nearest fixed thing, usually the side of the bed. If you have the carcass depth plus a shutter width plus room to stand, hinged works. If not, go sliding, or use narrower hinged shutters.

Wardrobe dimensions that work

Depth

IKEA's PAX wardrobe frames, sold in India, are 58 cm deep (IKEA India). The PAX buying guide also lists a 35 cm deep frame (IKEA PAX and KOMPLEMENT buying guide), useful for folded clothes and shoes in a passage. IKEA's HASVIK sliding doors list a built-in depth of 7.5 cm and a door thickness of 2.2 cm (IKEA India), so a sliding wardrobe on a 58 cm frame takes about 65.5 cm of the room.

Height and the loft

PAX frames come 201 cm or 236 cm tall. The buying guide sets the minimum ceiling height needed to assemble them: 202 cm and 237 cm for hinged doors, 205 cm and 240 cm for sliding doors. India's Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 set the minimum height of a habitable room at 2.75 m, with at least 2.4 m clear under any beam (MoHUA, clause 4.3; your state's rules may differ). Two things follow:

Above a 236 cm unit in a 275 cm room there is about 39 cm left. Fill it with a loft box for suitcases and bedding. MOA's cost guide calls loft storage cheap per foot and worth taking.
Check the beam. If a beam crosses the wardrobe wall at 2.4 m, a 240 cm requirement for sliding doors leaves no margin. A carpenter-built wardrobe is made to the measured height, so measure under the beam, not the ceiling.

A bedroom with a full-height wardrobe beside a curtained window: four tall hinged shutters in a warm beige finish, the lower part of each shutter fluted, long black bar handles, and a loft box above running up to a pale blue ceiling. A bed and a pendant lamp are in the foreground. — Full-height hinged wardrobe with split upper and lower shutters and a loft above, design render for the Shanti Vanam home in Hyderabad. Image: Aarthi Roy, AAY Design, on MOA

Aarthi Roy's Shanti Vanam render on MOA shows the full-height approach, with a loft box closing the gap to the ceiling.

Shutter widths

Hinged: IKEA India's PAX hinged doors come 50 cm or 25 cm wide, and 195 cm or 229 cm tall (IKEA India).
Sliding: IKEA sells sliding doors in pairs 150 cm or 200 cm wide in total. Hettich's TopLine L system takes panels 550 to 1,500 mm wide in a two-door wardrobe (550 to 1,350 mm in a three-door one), up to 2,600 mm tall and 50 kg each; TopLine XL K2 takes panels 600 to 2,000 mm wide, up to 3,000 mm tall and 100 kg (Hettich India catalogue).

The clearance in front

A hinged shutter swings through a quarter circle as wide as the shutter itself, so a 50 cm shutter needs 50 cm of clear floor before you count the space to stand in front of it. Our reasoning, not a standard: the wider the shutter, the more floor it takes, which is one reason modular hinged shutters such as IKEA's are 50 cm wide or less. Sliding doors avoid the swing entirely, which IKEA's product page puts plainly: no swing space, more room for furniture.

Two scale drawings of a 200 cm wide, 58 cm deep wardrobe. Left, hinged: four 50 cm shutters drawn open in plan, with a shaded 50 cm swing zone in front, and an elevation with four hinges per 229 cm shutter and a 39 cm loft under a 275 cm ceiling. Right, sliding: two 100 cm panels on a 7.5 cm double track in plan, the front panel slid over the back one so half the width is open, and an elevation with a top track and the same loft. — The same wardrobe with hinged and sliding doors: hinged shutters need a swing zone as deep as they are wide, sliding panels add depth and open only half the width at a time. Sizes from IKEA PAX; loft height assumes a 275 cm room. Diagram: MOA

Internal layout: plan from your clothes

Start with what you own, not a catalogue drawing. IKEA's buying guide gives a useful set of measurements:

coats: about 100 cm of hanging height
blouses and shirts: about 80 cm
short dresses: about 120 cm
really long garments: up to 190 cm
hanging trousers: 60 to 70 cm
10 folded T-shirts: about 25 cm of shelf height; 10 folded sweaters: about 30 cm

Sarees, lehengas and long kurtas are not on IKEA's list, so hang yours and measure them. In practice that gives three kinds of bay:

Long hanging: one rail high up for dresses, long kurtas and coats.
Double hanging: two rails for shirts and blouses, each needing about 80 cm by IKEA's figure.
Shelves and drawers: folded clothes, sarees and innerwear, with a locker if you want one.

Two details matter more than people expect:

Reaching the top rail. In a full-height wardrobe the top rail is out of easy reach. A pull-down garment lift solves it: Hettich's Duo Lift fits inside widths of 750 to 1,150 mm and carries 10, 15 or 18 kg depending on the model.
Drawers behind sliding doors. Since only half a sliding wardrobe is open at a time, our advice is to keep a drawer stack within one panel's width so a door never blocks half of it.

Carcass and shutter materials

Bedroom walls: CenturyPly says moisture-resistant (MR) plywood, made to IS 303, is commonly used for wardrobes and is enough for bedrooms (CenturyPly). Ask for the IS mark in the quote.
Damp or coastal homes: Greenply recommends HDHMR board for wardrobes in ground-floor homes and coastal regions, calls it moisture-resistant rather than waterproof, and says edge-banding or sealing cut edges significantly extends its life (Greenply).
Wet walls: where a wardrobe backs onto a bathroom, boiling-water-proof (BWP) plywood to IS 710 is the safer grade, which CenturyPly says can be used even for furniture exposed to water. Fix any seepage before the wardrobe goes up; our advice, since no board survives a leaking wall.
Factory frames: IKEA lists PAX frames as particleboard and fibreboard with a honeycomb paper filling, so keep them on dry walls.

For shutters, laminate sits in the essential band of MOA's cost guide, and acrylic or veneer fronts in the mid band. Tall shutters can warp. Hettich's door straightener is made for doors over 16 mm thick and up to 2,600 mm tall, helps prevent warping, and Hettich recommends two per door.

Hardware that decides how it feels

Hinged

Number of hinges: IKEA specifies three soft-closing hinges for a 195 cm door and four for a 229 cm door.
Hinge type: Hettich India lists Sensys concealed hinges such as the 8631i for 15 to 32 mm thick doors with a 95° opening, and the 8645i for 15 to 24 mm doors opening to 110°, on bases with 0°, 9.5° and 16° cranks for different ways a shutter sits on the carcass. Ask for the model number, not "soft-close hinges".

Sliding

Top-running or bottom-running: Hettich makes both. Its top-running TopLine systems hang the doors from above; the bottom-running SlideLine range includes inset solutions for wardrobes and walk-ins.
Soft close: IKEA's HASVIK doors have soft closing built into the rails, and Hettich's TopLine L sets include it.
Dust: brush strips, which Hettich sells in 2,100 and 2,500 mm lengths for sliding doors, seal the gap where panels pass.
Price: in Hettich India's June 2022 catalogue, a TopLine L set for two wooden doors lists at ₹20,900 to ₹21,200 MRP, a three-door set at ₹27,900 to ₹28,200, and a two-door TopLine XL K2 set from ₹49,230.

What a wardrobe costs

MOA's room-by-room cost guide gives the market range: wardrobes are priced per square foot of shutter face, commonly ₹1,200 to ₹2,200 for hinged laminate units, more for sliding doors and much more for walk-in joinery. Wardrobes and bedroom storage take 20 to 25 per cent of a typical mid-level fit-out.

Worked example, as arithmetic on that range: the 200 cm by 236 cm wardrobe in the diagram has about 50 sq ft of shutter face, so a hinged laminate version lands around ₹60,000 to ₹1.1 lakh before the loft. A sliding version costs more, and a two-door track set alone was about ₹21,000 at Hettich's 2022 list prices. For a ready-made comparison, IKEA India's PAX hinged doors are listed from ₹6,000 to ₹16,500 per 50 cm door, depending on the design.

Before you sign, get these in writing:

carcass board grade and IS number, and edge-banding on all cut edges
hinge or track brand and model, and the warranty
shutter finish by make, and straighteners on tall shutters
whether the loft, internal accessories and garment lift are in the price

Frequently asked questions

Which is better for a small bedroom, sliding or hinged?

If the bed or a door sits within about 50 cm of the wardrobe front, sliding, because it needs no swing space. If you have that space, hinged is cheaper and shows the whole wardrobe at once.

What is the standard depth of a wardrobe in India?

There is no legal standard. Modular systems are built around 58 to 60 cm: IKEA's PAX frames are 58 cm deep, and sliding doors add about 7.5 cm in front.

How tall should a wardrobe be?

Take it to the ceiling. A 236 cm unit plus a loft fills a standard 2.75 m room; IKEA needs at least 237 cm of ceiling to assemble a 236 cm hinged unit and 240 cm for sliding doors.

Which plywood is best for a bedroom wardrobe?

MR plywood to IS 303 suits a dry bedroom. Choose HDHMR with sealed edges in ground-floor or coastal homes, and BWP to IS 710 against a bathroom wall.

Planning bedroom storage? See interior designers on MOA and the homes they have designed.

Sources

IKEA India: PAX wardrobe frame, 75x58x236 cm (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
IKEA India: HASVIK pair of sliding doors, 200x236 cm (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
IKEA India: PAX doors with hinges (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
IKEA: PAX and KOMPLEMENT buying guide (PDF) (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
Hettich India: Sliding and Folding Systems master catalogue, effective June 2022 (PDF) (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, TCPO: Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 (clause 4.3) (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
CenturyPly: BWP Plywood, BWR Plywood and MR Grade Plywood: A Comparison (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
Greenply: HDHMR Full Form and Meaning (accessed 16 Oct 2026)

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