Antique Single Wardrobes
A single wardrobe is a one-door clothes cupboard, tall and narrow, made for a bedroom, a hall or a small room where a two- or three-door wardrobe would not fit.
Antique Single Wardrobes
Behind the one door sits hanging space, and often a drawer or two in the base. The form took over from the chest and the press through the 18th and 19th centuries, and the single-door version was the compact answer: bedroom, hall, servant's room, anywhere width was short.
On Sellingantiques the category is overwhelmingly British and sits between about 1850 and 1930. Victorian, Edwardian and 1920s pieces together account for most of the dated listings. A Victorian or Edwardian mahogany single-door wardrobe is what you are most likely to meet, and plain Victorian mahogany is the single commonest thing here.
After mahogany come oak, a good deal of it Arts and Crafts, and pine, which runs to stripped, waxed and painted surfaces. Walnut turns up throughout, including burr and figured walnut in the 1920s and Art Deco pieces around 1930. French single-door armoires make up a smaller run, in carved oak, walnut, rosewood, cherry and paint.
Titles do a lot of the work in this category. They flag a mirror to the door, inlay, a fitted compactum interior, or that a pine carcase dismantles for moving. A mirrored door is a feature worth naming rather than the default, and pine listings advertising 'knock down' construction turn up again and again.
Top And Bottom
Timber sets the floor and the ceiling. Plain pine and plain mahogany sit at the bottom of the range; figured walnut, burl walnut, figured mahogany, rosewood and Hungarian ash sit at the top. The same one-door box in a better-figured veneer is a different piece of furniture in the eyes of the market.
Decoration is the other lever. Inlay is called out in a modest number of titles, most often on mahogany, and carving in fewer still, mostly on oak and on the French armoires. The highest-placed piece in the archive is a marquetry-inlaid oak wardrobe, which tells you where surface work lands.
Two smaller things push upward. A compactum interior, fitted with shelves or trays alongside the hanging space, appears in the upper part of the range wherever it is named. So does a label or stencil from a named firm, which in this category shows up as a note in the title rather than anything you can read from the outside.
Antique Single Wardrobes Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for single wardrobes, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
The most expensive single wardrobe ever sold on Sellingantiques was an Art Deco walnut one, c1930, in February 2022.
The Antique Single Wardrobes Glossary
- Single wardrobe
- A wardrobe with one hanging door, narrower than the two- or three-door forms, and the whole of this category.
- Compactum
- A wardrobe fitted inside with shelves, trays or drawers as well as hanging space. Named in a handful of titles, all toward the upper end.
- Dismantles, or knock down
- Made to come apart into sections for moving through doors and up stairs. A recurring note on the pine examples.
- Armoire
- The French word for the same cupboard form, used in listings for the Continental pieces. About one title in eleven.
- Sentry box
- A tall upright single wardrobe of narrow box form. It surfaces only a few times, twice as a matched pair.
- Limed oak
- Oak with white filler worked into the grain, a 1930s finish that appears among the oak listings.
Antique Single Wardrobes: Frequently Asked Questions
What period are most single wardrobes?
The dealer-entered dates run from 1850 to 1930. Victorian, Edwardian and 1920s pieces together account for the bulk of the dated listings on Sellingantiques.
Eleven listings are dated only '19th Century', which is a bracket rather than a year, so the earliest end is looser than the figures suggest. A very few titles claim Regency or Georgian, too few to count as a group.
Which woods turn up most often?
Mahogany leads, in around a third of titles, followed by oak, then pine, then walnut. Satinwood appears on a few Edwardian pieces.
Rosewood, cherry and Hungarian ash show up in single figures. The French armoires account for most of the cherry and some of the carved oak.
Do single wardrobes have mirrored doors?
Some do, and the title usually says so. Mirror is named in only a handful of listings, against 'door' appearing in a quarter of them.
So a mirrored door reads as a distinguishing feature in this category rather than the standard arrangement.
What does it mean when a wardrobe dismantles?
It comes apart into sections: cornice, sides, back and base separating so a tall carcase can go up a staircase and through a doorway.
Pine listings note this repeatedly, as '(dismantles)' or 'knock down'. It was a design decision, not a later alteration.
How often do single wardrobes come to market?
Only about fourteen a year on Sellingantiques, spread across forty-eight different dealers over the life of the archive.
That means most dealers here have handled one or two rather than carrying a steady line of them.
Are French armoires common in this category?
No. Continental examples are thin on the ground, with the French armoire accounting for roughly one title in eleven.
Where they appear, sample titles describe carved oak, walnut, rosewood, cherry and painted finishes.