What a custom
closet actually
costs in New York.

We are asked the cost question in every first conversation. We have learned to answer it directly. A reach-in in basic materials starts at about six thousand five hundred dollars. A dressing room is anywhere from thirty-two thousand to two hundred and eighty. A whole residence begins at three hundred. A custom door is between three and a half and forty-five thousand. None of those numbers are surprises; they are written on our projects page and we are saying them aloud here because the most useful thing we can do at a first meeting is to keep both sides from wasting the next twenty minutes.

The bands are wide for a reason, and the reason is that the same room can be drawn three ways. A primary dressing room in a Tribeca loft, eleven feet by fourteen, can be a six-week project in a single material with conventional hanging — that's a thirty-two thousand dollar room. The same room drawn with an island, a vanity, fluted glass uppers, integrated lighting, brass hardware, leather-lined trays, and a walnut bench will be a fifteen-week project and will land somewhere between one hundred and eighty and two hundred and eighty. We can build either room. We refuse to pretend that they cost the same thing.

The drivers are five, and they are the same drivers on every project, in roughly descending order of impact. Linear feet of cabinetry — how much wall the room takes — is the biggest single variable. Material tier — soap-finished oak versus walnut versus a hand-rubbed lacquer, and whether the room uses one material or a palette — is the second. Hanging configuration — single hang, double hang, island, vanity, integrated drawers, jewelry trays, custom hooks — is the third. Lighting and climate — integrated LED, motion control, dehumidification, climate-controlled handbag drawers — is the fourth. Finally there is the substrate: whether the wall is clean drywall on metal studs (an easier install) or plaster and lath in a pre-war building (a slower, more careful one). On any given dressing room the linear feet and the material together account for two-thirds of the number.

A reach-in, by which we mean a single-bay closet in a hallway or bedroom, six to ten feet wide and a standard depth, is the entry of the practice. Six thousand five hundred is the starting number and assumes a sensible run of material — a poplar carcass, a hand-painted finish in one color, conventional drawer joinery, brass hardware, an integrated valet rod and shoe shelf — in a room with workable substrate. A larger reach-in, ten to fourteen feet wide, with a deeper drawer stack and a more articulated configuration, generally runs ten to sixteen. Both of those numbers include the survey, the shop drawings, the build, the delivery, the install, and the post-install snagging visit. They do not include painting the room itself, electrical work behind the wall, or any millwork that is not in the closet — that work belongs to a different trade and we will not absorb it into our number.

A dressing room — by which we mean a walk-in, with the room read as a room rather than a closet — starts at thirty-two thousand. That floor is the smallest version of the room: a single tier of hanging, a drawer bank, an open shelf at the top, in soap-finished oak with brass hardware. The dressing rooms we draw most often, on Park Avenue or Beekman Place or in a Bronxville colonial, are in the eighty-to-one-eighty band: a primary dressing of eighty to one hundred and twenty square feet, with an island, integrated lighting, fluted glass uppers, leather-lined drawers, and a hand-rubbed lacquer on the perimeter cabinetry. The upper end of the band — two hundred and forty up to two hundred and eighty — is the dressing room that is really three rooms: a hers, a his, and a shared dressing island in between, executed in walnut with a stone-topped island and a vanity wall in fluted glass. We have delivered three of those in the last eighteen months. They are uncommon. They are not exotic.

A whole residence project begins at three hundred thousand. That number reflects a six-room scope — mudroom, pantry, two dressing rooms, library, and a laundry — drawn on one set of plans and executed across a season. The largest house projects we have shipped, the Greenwich and Bedford residences that include a panelled library, a wine room, and a primary suite with a stone-topped dressing island, have landed between nine hundred thousand and slightly over a million. We do not chase those numbers. They arrive when a particular house, on a particular plan, needs everything we make.

A custom door is the line item that surprises most clients. A passage door, drawn for an existing opening, in white oak with brass hardware and a soap-finished interior, starts at about three thousand five hundred. A pivoting library door in walnut, four-and-a-half feet wide and nine feet tall, with a leather-lined edge and a magnetic catch, will land between eighteen and twenty-eight thousand. A monumental front door — a piece of architecture in its own right — runs to forty-five. Doors are the most labour-intensive single object we make because they are read on both sides, hung on hinges that have to carry the weight of solid timber across a five-thousand-cycle service life, and finished to a standard that the rest of the room either matches or fails to.

The payment schedule is in thirds. A first third is due on signature of the project, which is when the work goes into the shop's diary and the materials are ordered; a second third on commencement of the build, which is the day the carcass leaves the saw and goes to the bench; the final third is due on install and snag. Stage payments are simpler for both sides than a deposit-and-balance, and they line up with the workshop's own cash flow against the lumber yard, the hardware suppliers, and the finishing house. We do not change the schedule. We will, where a client asks, push the second third by a week or two; we will not split it further.

We publish a band rather than a number because a number, for a custom closet, is a lie until the survey is done. We could quote a single figure for a standard fourteen-foot dressing room and be right two-thirds of the time, but the third we are wrong is the third where the substrate is plaster, or the ceiling is eleven feet, or the room takes an island because the client has decided she actually wants one. None of those are surprises; they are facts that emerge in the first meeting. The band lets the conversation be honest. The number lands after the survey, in writing, before the deposit is taken.

There is a comparison worth making, briefly. The volume players in this category — the firms that ship a thousand closets a quarter, drawn from a catalog of components, with a salesperson on a quota — generally price a primary closet in the fifteen-to-thirty-five thousand band. That is a real number for a real product, and for the right room it is the right answer. The product we deliver is a different product. The carcass is solid, the drawers are dovetailed, the doors are hung on hardware that does not need replacing in twenty years, the substrate carries the load, and the file stays open after the install. That is what the higher number is for. We do not say either choice is wrong. We say the two are not the same thing, and we publish our band so the client can decide which one they're buying.

A project with us carries twenty-five years of guarantee on the cabinetry and lifetime on the joinery. Most run four to six weeks on the bench; a whole residence runs a season. Those are the practical facts. The financial fact is the band above. If the band is right for the room you are drawing, the next step is a survey, and we'll come measure.