Walk-in wardrobe design in Batumi: storage system, lighting and air

Where to find space for a walk-in wardrobe

Developers rarely hand over a ready-made walk-in wardrobe, so the space for one has to be found in the layout. Most often it is a corner or short wall of a bedroom, a dead end of the corridor, a small second room or a recess the developer left. We start walk-in wardrobe design in Batumi by working out how much will be left for the room next door: the walkway by the bed, space for bedside tables, the air conditioner, the window.

If the walk-in wardrobe takes away the walkway by the bed, we show an option with a floor-to-ceiling wardrobe alongside it, and you compare both on the same plan. When a walk-in wardrobe is partitioned off from a bedroom, we draw both rooms on one sheet: the partition shifts the bed, the sockets at the headboard and the air conditioner, and this has to be settled together with the bedroom design.

An inventory of your things and arranging them by height

Before drawing any shelves, we count your things: long dresses and coats, shirts, folded clothes, shoes, bags, suitcases. As a guide, one adult usually needs 1.5–2 linear metres of system and a couple 3–4 m, but an inventory is more accurate than any rule of thumb. If you don't live in Georgia, we do the inventory on a video call, and how the whole project works at a distance is described on the page about a remote design project.

Shoes go on angled shelves: one pair takes 20–25 cm of width, so a 90 cm shelf holds three or four pairs.

Air: where it comes in and where it goes out

We draw the air path in a walk-in wardrobe on the plan, just as we draw the lighting. The extractor goes diagonally opposite the door, in the far corner under the ceiling, so that air from the bedroom crosses the whole room instead of taking the short way from the bottom of the door to the top. How to bring air in through the door, and where to vent the fan if there is no ventilation shaft nearby, is covered on the page about walk-in wardrobe renovation.

If the extractor can only go above the door, we keep the system open, without closed boxes or back panels, so that air still passes between the clothes. Against an external wall we choose uprights that stand off the wall and slatted shoe shelves.

A dehumidifier gets its own spot on the floor for the winter, where clothes won't cover it, with a socket next to it. If there is a bathroom behind the wall, the water from the unit can be piped into the drain, and nobody has to empty the tank. Which unit to choose, and when damp needs a different cure, is covered on the page about dehumidifiers and dealing with damp.

Lighting and the mirror

Light in a walk-in wardrobe should fall on the clothes from the front. We move the strip under the shelf above the hanging rail to the front edge, or fit it vertically in the uprights: at the back it lights up the hangers, and the front of the clothes stays in shadow. If a light is behind you, you block it yourself.

We hang a full-length mirror where you can step back a pace and a half or two, and light the person rather than the glass: the downlight goes on the ceiling between the mirror and the spot where you stand in front of it. If the walk-in wardrobe is open to the bedroom, its lighting must not shine towards the bed at night: we hide the strip in a profile and position the sensor so that it doesn't go off when someone just walks past the opening.

A walk-in wardrobe for yourself and for rental

In your own apartment the walk-in wardrobe holds the whole family's things for every season. We design it from the inventory: first we decide whose things go where, then leave a couple of empty sections for whatever turns up in a year or two.

A long-term tenant arrives with a year's worth of things, and at a viewing a family looks first at where they will put them. A short-term rental needs a walk-in wardrobe less: a guest needs a rail for a dozen hangers and a stand for an open suitcase. Part of the room can then go to the owner, as a lockable cupboard for spare linen.

Common walk-in wardrobe mistakes

• the walkway is under 60 cm, and a drawer won't open while someone is standing in front of it;
• the drawers are by the doorway, and the door frame stops them opening;
• the corner of an L-shaped or U-shaped system is left empty;
• a hanging rail above a tall shelf ends up at 2 m, out of reach;
• the light is behind you, and there is no way to light the mirror;
• closed shoe boxes stand against a cold external wall, and the dehumidifier socket was forgotten.

The sheets you get

The walk-in wardrobe project includes a measured plan, an elevation of every wall with the sections, hanging rails, shelves and drawers, 3D, a lighting and socket plan, and an air path diagram with the fan and grilles. A system specification comes separately: it shows how many sections, rails and drawers of each kind to order, even if the system is bought from a shop as ready-made modules.

3D is included in the price: it lets you check how the system looks from the bedroom and how much room is left in the walkway. If the walk-in wardrobe is behind a solid door and the system is modular, a collage can replace the 3D, which is what we usually do in a whole-apartment project.

The crew needs the sheets before the furniture maker does: the backing for wall rails and hanging rails goes into the partition before it is boarded, and the cables to the strip and the sensor are run before plastering. Making and fitting the system is described on the page about made-to-measure wardrobes and walk-in wardrobes. If we carry out the renovation, the designer checks the backing against photos as part of designer supervision, before it is closed up.

How much walk-in wardrobe design costs in Batumi

Design for a walk-in wardrobe of up to 8 m² costs from 960 to 1,440 ₾ per room. The price is based on the area, but doesn't go below the minimum fee per room. It covers the layout of shelves, hanging rails and drawers, 3D, lighting with a motion sensor, the extractor and a socket for a dehumidifier. This is the designer's work: the storage system, the renovation and the appliances are paid for separately.

As a guide, a made-to-measure open system of shelves, hanging rails and drawers costs from 1,020 to 1,440 ₾ per linear metre along the wall, and a sliding-door wardrobe from 1,500 ₾ per metre. LED strip installation costs 34–38 ₾ per metre, and a domestic dehumidifier 840–1,200 ₾. A furniture maker usually makes their own 3D of the wardrobe as part of their own order, but it isn't tied to the walls, the lighting or the air path.

A U-shaped walk-in wardrobe with an island and a mirrored wall, its own extractor and lighting on every shelf costs more. A system along one wall costs less. The final cost is set after the survey and once the set of sheets is agreed, and the number of revision rounds is written into the contract.