Sliding wardrobe configurator: what to show customers about doors (plates, mirrors, soft-close)

Closetforge is a white-label 3D wardrobe configurator and quoting software for fitted-wardrobe makers. Sliding doors are where an online wardrobe designer most often promises something a workshop cannot build, so this guide sets out what a sliding wardrobe configurator should show a customer, which choices it should offer, and which rules it has to enforce on the customer's behalf. Everything described as Closetforge behaviour below is what the editor does today; nothing is planned or promised.

Why sliding doors need more care than hinged ones

A hinged door is one panel on two or more hinges. A sliding door is a system: leaves running on a top track and a bottom guide, a set of running gear per leaf, profiles down the edges that also serve as the handle, and often a leaf made of several plates in different materials. Every one of those parts has a size limit, a weight limit or a price.

A configurator that lets a customer pick "sliding doors" as a colour swatch hides all of that, and the workshop finds out at the survey. A good one shows the parts the customer actually chooses, and quietly applies the rules they should not have to know.

Leaves, overlap and the bypass rule

The first choice is how many leaves. On a Closetforge site a full-width sliding front has two, three or four leaves. The customer sees the leaves in 3D and can play the doors open to see what each position uncovers.

That matters because sliding leaves bypass each other on two tracks, so part of the wardrobe is always behind a door. A customer who puts drawers in the wrong bay can end up with drawers that no door position ever uncovers. The editor checks this: if a leaf covers a bay in every position the doors can take, the drawers in that bay blink red and the customer reads "Drawers in this section can't be opened — a sliding door panel covers them in every position", with the ways out: move the drawers, switch to hinged doors, or drop the sliding doors.

The rule follows real two-track hardware. With four leaves, two can be pushed together to one end and the other two to the other end, so at least half of the wardrobe opens at once. The check is made against those positions, not against a simplified model that would wrongly flag bays a customer can in fact reach.

Plates: dividing a leaf into panels

Many sliding doors are not one sheet. A leaf can be divided horizontally into plates, each with its own fill. In the editor this is the Door division control:

• One plate, Glass leaf, or Custom.
• In custom, each plate's fill is Main (the front decor), Accent (the contrast decor), Mirror or Glass, with even or different heights.
• The construction is Framed, with a horizontal profile between the plates, or Edged, where edge-banded plates are held only by the two vertical profiles. Framed is offered once the workshop has chosen the profile it buys; until then the editor says so rather than pricing a part with no price.
• Every leaf can share one division, or a leaf can have its own.

The editor refuses a division it cannot build. A plate must be at least 40 mm tall, so a leaf holds only so many plates, and the customer is told how many and why.

Mirrors and glass

Two kinds of reflective or transparent front come up most often, and they are different things:

• A mirror is chosen per leaf, or per plate. A mirrored plate is a board with a mirror on it, so it is cut and priced as both.
• Glass has a finish: Clear or Satin. The finish applies to every pane in that door system, and it is priced at its own rate. If the workshop has no price for the glass, the quote says so in a sentence the customer can read, rather than silently using a board instead.

Glass is not offered on a section's own small sliding pair (see below); the customer is offered board or mirrored leaves, or a hinged glass door for that section instead.

Frame finish, handles and soft-close

Three smaller choices complete a sliding door, and each changes what the workshop orders:

• Frame finish. The aluminium profiles come in silver, black, anthracite, bronze, white or gold. The colour is drawn on the 3D model, so the customer sees the frame against their decor.
• Handles. A sliding leaf has full-height profile handles on both edges, and the editor says so instead of offering knobs that cannot pass the other leaf.
• Soft close. A damper on each leaf so the doors close gently. The editor shows how many sets that is, one per leaf, and the quote buys exactly that many.

Mixed fronts, section doors and shared fronts

Not every wardrobe wants one sliding system across its whole width. The editor supports three other arrangements, each with its own limits:

• Hinged at the ends, sliding in the middle. A front can be divided into zones. A sliding zone needs an opening wide enough for its two leaves; a narrower one is refused with its width and the minimum.
• A section's own sliding pair. Small sliding doors that run in their own track inside one section's opening, each with a flush pull so it can pass the other. These are refused when the opening is too narrow, too low, longer than the track or the leaves would be too heavy for the gear, each with a sentence naming the alternative.
• One front over several wardrobes. In a room of several units, one set of sliding leaves can run across all of them on its own pair of tracks.

There are also places a sliding track cannot go. A sloped or stepped top, the diagonal front of a corner unit and the opening over a bed all need hinged doors, and the editor converts or refuses sliding doors there with the reason.

What the workshop gets from the same design

The customer's choices are the same data the workshop's documents are made from, so the picture and the bill agree. From the design, a quote lists the running gear per leaf, the top and bottom rails, the profiles, a damper per leaf when soft-close is chosen, the divider profile on a framed leaf, and each plate in the cut list with its size and decor. When the run is longer than a stocked length of track, the customer sees a note that the rail will be joined or ordered longer, and nothing about the price or design changes.

When a leaf is taller than the board it is cut from, the backing board is made in pieces and the editor says where the joint falls, so nobody is surprised when the doors arrive. The customer sees the design in 3D, and the workshop's PDF carries the cut list and sheet layout.

What this guide does not do

• It does not recommend a hardware brand. The gear, rails and dampers a quote buys are the products the workshop maps in its own settings; the manufacturers linked in the sources are examples of where such systems come from, not endorsements.
• It does not give weight or length limits for any particular system. Those come from the hardware you buy; check them in the manufacturer's data.
• It does not price sliding doors. Prices come from the workshop's own rates; the pricing guide explains the method.
• It does not describe features the editor does not have. If a choice is not listed above, a Closetforge site does not offer it today.

Try the sliding doors yourself

The quickest test of a sliding wardrobe configurator is to build a sliding wardrobe in it and try to break it: put drawers behind the middle leaves, add a mirror plate, ask for glass on a small section door. Do that in the live demo, or book a call to see it with your own hardware in mind.