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Joinery has the ability to completely transform the spaces in your home, both from an aesthetic point of view and a practical point of view. The four walls in a room instantly become a more functional, usable and liveable space when well-considered joinery is included, and the custom element is soo good because it can be tailored to suit your personality and the way you live in your home.

Among the many reasons we are fans of custom joinery, the key one to me is the cohesive and seamless look that custom joinery helps you achieve in your home- tying all areas and rooms together. Custom joinery gives you the ability to match your kitchen joinery looks, with that in your pantry, bathroom, office space, bar/study nooks, entryway joinery etc. This creates a visually pleasing flow inside your home, shows care of thought, and allows for greater organisation of your home- ultimately providing a more stress free, enjoyable home environment. For example, a lot of our clients recently have used custom joinery to emphasise flexible and multifunctional living and workspaces. Sometimes to achieve greater functionality, or to conceal workspaces when they aren’t being used

Custom joinery also provides another great opportunity to create a welcoming, warm and tactile environment. Popular custom joinery brings texture and organic materials into the home. For example, there are so many natural timbers and gorgeous stone finishes which can look really spectacular. In the Architectural world here in Queenstown,  this ends up also being another way of connecting the interior of your home with the beautiful surroundings your home sits in- a really important part of the design and vision of these architectural homes.
Another positive too is that for those on more of a budget, you can still achieve that same pleasing tactile finish, with the ‘look-like organic materials’ such as engineered stone and laminate joinery.

The only ‘downsides’ with custom joinery, are the added cost to your budget and the extra time it might add to your build. BUT, in my view, two easy ways to turn these negatives into positives is to remember that in the long run, custom joinery will generally last much longer and cost you less in purchasing and replacing extra furniture…. so long term cost is actually less!
And in regard to the timeframes being longer, it’s important to be organised and ensure that your builder and joiner have communicated as early in the piece as possible so they can get ahead and provide the joiners with plenty of time to get the job done (as any good builder would do for you anyway).

So you’re convinced, custom built joinery is perfect for your next build.. here are some top tips to keep in mind that we have learned from our experiences:

-Have your joiners provide you with drawings and elevations, alongside a detailed quote as early as possible to help with your vision. This way you can explore areas that might be ok to compromise, or at least know where you stand with your budget, before you OK anything. This is not an area of your home you want to leave for surprises.

-Balance storage with display- so many of our customers say they wish they had included more display spaces in their design rather than having to source furniture pieces after the build. Leaving it to furniture can result in a struggle to find cohesive pieces.

• Talk to your joiner about including clever electrical features in your joinery plan. Whether this be concealed plugs, speakers and LED and or recessed lighting. Use the opportunity to improve the functionality of the joinery space but also to add to the ambience and improving the look aesthetically.
• Be realistic and generous with your budget if this is something you are keen to include. We started working with a budget for kitchen and laundry joinery of around 30,000 for example. Once we add on bathroom vanities and shelving, display shelving throughout the house, a bar nook, some built in wardrobes in the bedrooms and some functional and pretty storage throughout, we are expecting to, probably at a minimum, almost triple that budget to achieve the look we are after. Durability and better quality will never be the thing that goes on your regrets list at the end of a build.
• In saying this there are levels of your joinery you can work with to achieve a joinery package within your budget. Laminate is still very effective and has great durability, while savnig you a lot of money. Timber veneer is a pretty big step up from laminate, costing a substantial amount more as does solid timber- so be realistic with the product your selecting depending on the available budget. Timber look laminates area a fantastic option that shouldn’t be snubbed- it balances cost and durability with the aesthetic of real timber. There is also now so many choices of the finish too, whether flat and smooth, rough sawn, textured, woodgrain- lots to suit what you’d prefer and achieve a more realistic look. And remember it’s all about balance too- when budgeting, consider carefully whether saving now might cost you more later down the track.
• Have fun with your handles! I was advised by a joiner once; the handles should be considered like the jewellery of your home. Consider this an opportunity to bring in more texture and play with tactile options. Whether it be solid brass, timber, leather- something to really express your individual style or perhaps a negative detail handle to really modernise the finish.
• Know what you want when you go to speak with your architect or joiner about your joinery plans. Take pictures in some form- be it a scrapbook, magazine cut outs, a Pinterest album, images from Instagram etc. Know your likes and dislikes- do you like a decluttered finish, or do you have lots of important ‘things’ you want out on display. What colours do you like and have you seen any images of a mix of finishes you’d like to incorporate? The clearer your vision before you go and see them, the easier you will work together as a team.

Keeping in mind that we don’t make any money out of this blog, no joiners are paying us to write this for them and it makes the builder no extra money to have custom-built joinery in the home they are building for you, you can hopefully gather that this is a genuine recommendation from us to you to consider custom built joinery in your next build. And as always- any questions, please do sing out, we’d love to chat.