A wardrobe for a balcony

How a balcony differs from a room

Damp and condensation. On a balcony a cold outer wall meets warm air from the flat, and water settles on the coldest surface it can find. If that surface is the back panel of a wardrobe pressed flat against the wall, the damp sits there permanently. So a balcony wardrobe is set with a gap behind it rather than tight into the corner.

Temperature swings. An uninsulated glazed balcony can move tens of degrees in a day, and over a year runs from below freezing to heat behind glass. Board reacts: movement at the joints, creaks, fixings loosening over time. An indoor wardrobe never sees that cycle.

Sun. A balcony is the brightest place in a flat, and fronts fade there faster than anywhere else. On a south-facing balcony a light front copes better than a dark one, simply because the change shows less.

And geometry. A balcony is narrow, its walls are almost never parallel, the parapet often leans and the ceiling sits lower than in a room. An off-the-shelf wardrobe does not fit a box like that, which is exactly why balconies are nearly always made to measure.

What to build it from

Four decisions that make a balcony wardrobe different from an indoor one.

The order of decisions

1. 1

   Establish what kind of balcony you have

   Glazed and insulated, glazed and cold, or open. Everything else follows from that answer, and it also settles whether fitted furniture belongs there at all.

2. 2

   Decide what will live there

   Tools, preserves, a bicycle, out-of-season clothes, a drying rack: each has its own size and its own shelf. A wardrobe built "just somewhere to put things" ends up deep and awkward, because nothing specific was measured for it.

3. 3

   Measure the walkway, not just the wall

   The depth of the wardrobe is taken out of the width of the balcony. Leave the walkway you actually use, then check that the balcony window still opens and that you can still reach it.

4. 4

   Show the surveyor what is out of true

   A leaning parapet, a ceiling at different heights along its length, a corner that is not square: all normal for a balcony and all allowed for at the survey. For a made-to-measure wardrobe none of it is a problem; the problem is finding out about it on installation day.

5. 5

   Say what can be fixed to

   Not every wall on a balcony takes a load: a parapet can be thin, cladding sits on a frame, an outer wall may be insulated over. Say so before installation, because it decides both the fixings and what can be hung at all.

What not to put on a balcony

Fitted furniture on an open balcony. Under rain and frost, coated board lasts a season or two, after which it is no longer a wardrobe. Open balconies have their own materials, and none of them is furniture board.

Mirrored doors on a cold balcony. A mirror does not mind the cold; it minds condensation along its edge. Water standing at the joint eventually gives a dark band inward from the edge, and that does not come off.

Documents, books and electronics on an uninsulated balcony. Even inside a closed wardrobe the humidity out there is higher than in a room, which makes it the worst place in the flat for paper and electronics.

And a deep wardrobe on a narrow balcony. A 60 cm deep wardrobe on a 120 cm wide balcony takes half of it; in most cases 35–40 cm plus height all the way to the ceiling beats extra depth.