How to buy a PAX wardrobe when you’re new to PAX wardrobes
The step-by-step basics for absolute beginners.
For the purposes of getting up and running as fast as possible, this article will avoid the style and colour options, which are a bit more obvious once you understand the basic recipe for choosing the parts for your PAX cupboard.
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Step One. Measure Your Space
Sounds obvious, but there’s a couple of things worth mentioning. Get a tape measure and use it to find the maximum height, width & depth of the space you’d like to fill with a cupboard. Write these down on paper or in your phone or wherever’s convenient.
Take care to measure the maximum available space for each dimension, so you don’t have to keep returning to re-measure. As you’ll see in a moment the maximum available height is especially key.
Step Two. Choose Your Frames
We now need to select our frame or frames. The dimension specifics & range are subject to change so it’s worth checking the Ikea PAX Page for up-to-date product lines.
The following instructions are based on the current products available in the UK at the time of writing (summer-2018).
Width
The currently available frame widths are 50cm, 75cm and 100cm. To best illustrate the options lets take two examples;
1. A space that has a total available width of 50cm.
2. A space that has a total available width of 200cm.
In scenario 1, the available space allows only one option: a single frame of 50cm (so the frame order will be 1 x 50cm).
Whereas in scenario 2, there are more choices to make about how best to utilise frames of varying widths. You could go for one of the following frame combinations;
- 4 x 50cm frames — if narrower space between the uprights is suitable.
- 2 x 50cm & 1 x 100cm — for half narrow, half wider wardrobe.
- 2 x 75cm & 1 x 50cm — something in between.
Height
In the current product line you have 2 heights to choose from; 236cm and 201cm. The first question is which will fit in your space? To determine suitability, you will need to add a 4cm buffer to the height of the cupboard to allow for clearance when lifting your cupboard into place. If it’s looking like a tight fit then it is sometimes possible to get around needing the 4cm clearance by assembling the cupboard upright in the space where it will live. However, the IKEA recommendation seems to be assembling on the floor and manoeuvring into place.
Depth
This one is fairly straight-forward. Choose between 35cm and 58cm deep for your frames. All your frames should be the same depth in most of the scenarios I can imagine. You must also consider the space available in front of the cupboard for opening cupboard doors. Door handles will add extra depth too, so consider all of this in your decision.
Step Three. Select Your Doors
Now depending on your total cupboard width, you may or may not have the choice of sliding doors. Sliding doors are only available if your total cupboard width exceeds 150cm. For the purposes of this article we will choose hinged doors as it is the more basic option.
Hinged Doors
Hinged doors are available on cupboards of any size. The doors are sold separately in 50cm width and a choice of two heights 195cm and 229cm. The 195cm corresponding to a frame height of 201cm and the 229cm will fit the 236cm:
- For a frame height of 201cm choose the 50x195cm doors.
- For a frame height of 236cm choose 50x229cm doors.
Remember that doors are not compulsory, you can also have a completely open cupboard with no doors (walk-in wardrobe style), completely closed cupboard with doors covering all the internals or a combination. For example;
- A 150cm wide cupboard (made up of 1 x 100cm frame & 1 x 50cm frame) could cover the 100cm frame with 2 x 50cm doors, leaving the 50cm frame as exposed shelving for example.
Interior Organisers
Up to this point, it’s fairly easy to put together a solid list of parts for ordering your cupboard entirely online, with some accurate measuring and an understanding of the PAX concept.
However now things get a bit more tricky and depending on how complex you wish your cupboard interior to be — going to your local Ikea may be unavoidable. Start by taking a look at the KOMPLEMENT range. There are many wonderful elements available for sticking in your cupboard, but will they all fit?
There are four potential approaches to solving this problem, depending on which takes your fancy;
- Buy the frames & doors then assemble before ordering the interior items.
- Get a shopping list together for frames & doors, and a rough idea of what interior items you want from the KOMPLEMENT range, then go in-store to talk with an assistant.
- For basic interiors (some shelves & some drawers for example), use a piece of paper to draw your cupboard to scale and draw out the interior elements as accurately as possible, to work out quantities. (You must consider that the door hinges take up space that can’t be used for attaching interior parts).
- Use the online Pax Planner — although I can’t recommend this as it’s so bad, I gave up trying to use this piece of software after 5mins.
The risk of course with estimating the interior space you have is that you may over order or under order. However there can be a large time investment involved in working it all out with complete precision so its a trade off as to whether an extra drawer or shelf in your order is acceptable to you. Personally I opted to take the risk so I could avoid going into the shop at all costs!
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I hope this has been helpful for anyone who was as clueless as I was before buying my first PAX cupboard. Its also impossible that this article can’t be improved upon, so I’d be glad to hear your thoughts in the comments of how to do so.
