There’s always a choice in life and how you furnish your home is no exception. Fitted or freestanding furniture, what are the benefits and drawbacks? We design and make both, so we’re not biased. This is how we view the fitted option:
- The bespoke choice
Fitted furniture is bespoke by its very nature, so by choosing it you have absolute control over your room’s finished look, feel and functionality, right down to the very last detail. As every customer will have different tastes and expectations, every project will be unique and made individually. So within a given range of furniture you (the customer) can choose the furniture layout, range, units, finish, door styles, handles, interiors, built in lighting, internal mirrors and more. In actual fact, you are the designer, aided by a design consultant, who will guide and advise you expertly on creating your perfect living space, and where the sky is the limit on choice.
- Optimise your space
Fitted furniture is made exclusively to you, which means it’s designed exactly to suit your home’s architecture. So whether you have beams, sloping ceilings, alcoves or other fixtures situated in awkward places, your furniture will be designed to fit your room’s specifications and all available space will not just utilised, but optimised. So the under-used attic and the cluttered upstairs landing suddenly become useful storage areas which are not just practical, but fit perfectly and look flawless, whilst a rarely used guest bedroom can be converted into a multipurpose room with a foldaway wall bed which can be pulled down for overnight stays and returned to its wall position afterwards, thus providing a spacious home-study haven for the rest of the time.
- Clever storage
So to the customer’s functional requirements of their furniture: whatever your wants, the interiors of your wardrobes and other units will be designed with that functionality in mind and the days of undignified clutter are over. If you have plenty of coats, you will need a long-hanging option, one work shirt for every day of the month and you’ll need short-hanging. Should you have files and books to store, interior shelving will be useful, ties hang neatly on tie-racks, bedding and towels fit comfortably into interior drawers, and shoes fit perfectly into shoe racks rather than forming a mountain on the wardrobe floor, where only the top three pairs are visible and the ones at the bottom haven’t seen daylight since the 1990s.
- A tidy job
Fitted furniture means wiring from lighting and TV cables can be hidden from view and the vanity unit can be folded shut for a completely seamless look. Bags are no-longer hanging on wardrobe doors, nor are clothes in a wild heap on the chair – everything has a place and not only is this lack of clutter visually appealing, but it makes lighter work of cleaning. There are no hard to reach corners where the hoover doesn’t fit and your floor to ceiling wardrobes means there’s no dust collecting behind them or on the tops.
- Added value
Whilst fitted furniture can theoretically be dismantled and moved to another room or property, in general if you are moving house, you will leave your furniture behind. Quality fitted furniture will add value to your home and an estate agent will take this into consideration when valuing your property.
- So, why choose Hartleys for your furniture?
We blend 35 years’ experience, an absolute passion for our craft and a dedication to customer satisfaction to complete our winning formula. Founded by Richard Hartley, a joiner at heart and still the inspiration within the business, we maintain the traditional values of quality, service and value at every stage of the customer buying process, together with a good dose of Yorkshire wit and friendliness to boot.
A small, family business, based in Skipton, North Yorkshire, we are proud to offer a local and personal service to every single one of our customers. And we are passionate about looking after our customers, just as we are passionate about manufacturing in Yorkshire. We are not your faceless national company with a regional sales rep and a brochure.
We want you to enjoy not only the finished product, but also the journey your furniture takes from concept to fitting. We invite you to our showroom to inspire you and create ideas for your beautiful home. With 10 ranges to view, each one displays a different unit, finish, door-style, handle, storage option, plus handy space-saving ideas. Chat to our design consultant & discuss your room specifications – what you like, what you’re not sure about – with our wealth of experience and design talent we’ll doubtless have a solution to offer.
We appreciate that commissioning bespoke fitted furniture is a well-researched and a highly considered purchase. And you have as much time with our design consultant comparing options and talking through ideas as you need, whether in our showroom on at your home during the on-site survey. Our absolute aim is that you are 100% satisfied on fitting day.
Take samples home to help visualise your new furniture and we’d love to show you round our factory, where all our furniture is made – a neat combination of expert craftsmanship and state-of-the-art machinery. There are no third parties involved at any stage in the production of your new furniture; we operate under one single roof and thus maintain control at all times from purchasing quality raw materials to the professional fitting of your furniture. You can see your own furniture progress from design to manufacturing, delivery to installation; we hope you’ll see the pride we take at every stage of our work.
We hope you’ll put the production of your new furniture in our safe hands –
‘’You took so much trouble over the design of our fitted furniture…and I’m now writing to say how delighted I am with the finished product…Your solution to concealing, yet allowing access to the awkwardly placed fuse box was nothing short of brilliant! Full marks too to your fitter who did a really first class and professional job and left everything absolutely clean and tidy…It has been a pleasure to do business with you all.’’
And there’s more customer feedback for you to view on our website.
