Walk-in and corner wardrobe design tool for joiners: what a wardrobe configurator should get right

Closetforge is a white-label 3D wardrobe configurator and quoting software for fitted-wardrobe makers. Corner wardrobes and walk-in rooms are where a design tool is most likely to draw something that looks fine on screen and cannot be used in a real house. This guide explains how corners and walk-ins work in the Closetforge editor, the geometry behind the rules, and what the editor refuses and why. It describes what the editor does today, nothing more. A workshop chooses whether its customers are offered corner units and open walk-in designs at all, in the list of shapes it builds.

Why corners are hard

A straight wardrobe is a box. A corner is not: two runs meet at an angle, and the space where they meet is deep, dark and hard to reach. There are several ways to build it, from a blind corner box tucked behind a neighbour to an open L-shaped shelf. The Closetforge corner unit is a diagonal one: an L-shaped carcass with an angled front across the corner, so the whole cavity is reached through one opening.

The design question with a diagonal corner is not how big the carcass is, but how wide the way in is. A corner that looks generous from above can have an opening barely wider than a shoulder, into a space nearly a metre deep. Customers cannot see that from a plan view, so the tool has to tell them.

A corner is sized from its opening

The front of a diagonal corner unit runs between the ends of its two front arms. The deeper the arms, the narrower the front: for every millimetre of arm depth, the diagonal opening loses about 1.41 mm. So the sum runs backwards from the opening you want:

side of the corner = arm depth + wanted opening ÷ 1.41

With arms 600 mm deep, to line up with 600 mm runs either side, and an opening of about 900 mm, that gives a corner of about 1,240 × 1,240 mm. An 800 × 800 mm corner with the same arms cannot work: either the arms are cut back and no longer line up with the runs, or the opening is too narrow to reach into.

In the editor, a corner unit's two sides can each be between 700 and 1,300 mm. When the way in falls under 600 mm, the customer reads a warning that names the opening, explains that the front arms are what narrow it, and suggests either a larger square corner, with the size in millimetres, or shallower arms. The AI assistant is taught the same arithmetic, so the corners it proposes are sized from the opening too.

What a corner unit holds and which doors it takes

The diagonal corner is one carcass with one interior section, so its rules are tighter than a straight wardrobe's:

• Inside: shelves and one hanging rail. Drawers, shoe racks and other fittings are not offered in a corner, and the editor says so.
• Front: one door system across the diagonal, either one or two hinged doors, or no front at all for an open corner with shelves on show. A sliding track cannot span a diagonal, so sliding doors on a corner become hinged ones, with a note saying why.
• Arms that match their neighbours. If a corner's front arm is deeper or shallower than the wardrobe beside it, the fronts will not line up, and the editor warns of the step in millimetres and where to change it.

Walk-in rooms: several wardrobes, one design

A walk-in wardrobe on Closetforge is a room made of several units: straight runs, corner units and, if the room calls for it, an open side shelf unit at the end of a run. The customer sees them together in 3D and arranges them on a top-down room plan, dragging and rotating each one.

The room can be described in two ways: as a length of wall, or as a room's width and depth. Declaring the room and fitting the wardrobes to it are two separate actions. If the customer asks the wardrobes to fill the walls and they cannot, the editor refuses and names the gap, rather than quietly stretching a unit past what can be built.

Auto-arrange

Auto-arrange puts the units in place in one press:

• In a row, along one wall.
• As an L, around one corner.
• As a U, along three walls.
• On two facing walls, which is how many narrow dressing rooms are built.

Two facing walls

The two-wall arrangement, sometimes called a galley, stands one run on the left wall and one on the right, both aligned to the back wall, with nothing on the back wall itself. The aisle between them is the room's width minus the deepest unit on each side, because that is where the walkway is narrowest. If the room has no declared width, the aisle is 900 mm, enough for two people to pass.

The editor refuses a two-wall layout in three cases, each with its own sentence: when one of the units is a corner unit, because the two runs never meet in a corner; when every unit would end up on one wall; and when the room is too narrow to leave any aisle between the two runs. In each case the wardrobes stay where they were.

When the right answer is no corner at all

Two proper corner units take about 2.5 metres out of the wall between them. In a room three metres wide, that leaves a back run too short to be any use. The assistant is taught to propose corners only when what is left is still a real run, at least 800 mm on the back wall and on each side wall; otherwise it builds the U without corner units.

That is not lost storage. In a small walk-in, the corner where two runs meet is the floor you stand on to reach both of them. Forcing a corner unit into a wall that cannot hold one loses run length and gives a way in nobody can use.

What reaches the workshop

A walk-in is quoted as one job. The quote prices every unit from the workshop's own rates, pools the board across the whole room so the sheet count is for the room rather than for each unit separately, and the workshop PDF carries the cut list and sheet layout for every carcass, including the angled pieces of a corner. A workshop can also save a finished walk-in as a room template, so customers can start from it on the workshop's site.

What this guide does not do

• It does not cover every corner construction. The editor builds a diagonal corner unit; blind corners and open L-shaped corner shelves built from separate runs are not described here.
• It does not survey the room. Walls are rarely square, and a measurement visit still decides the final sizes.
• It does not give prices. A corner or a walk-in is priced from the workshop's own boards, hardware and labour, see the pricing guide.
• It does not promise that every room can be designed online. Unusual rooms, sloping ceilings combined with corners, or features the editor does not offer still need the workshop.

Design one yourself

The fastest way to see the corner rules is to break them: make a corner unit 800 mm square and watch the warning, or arrange three wardrobes on two facing walls in a narrow room. Try it in the live demo, or book a call to walk through a walk-in from one of your own jobs.