Why a standard unit fails under a slope
An off-the-shelf carcass is a rectangle. Under a slope it either sits at the height of the lowest point, or gets pushed towards the middle of the room until it finds its height. Either way the triangle between the top of the unit and the roof stays empty, and that void is often half the storage the room could hold.
Bespoke work starts from the opposite problem. We measure the real angle of the slope, draw the unit to that same angle, and the void disappears. This is the one place in a house where bespoke is not really a debating point: it is not about finish, it is about usable volume.
The three measurements that decide everything
Before any talk of materials or finishes, three numbers frame the project. One visit is enough to take them.
- The angle of the slope. It is rarely a round number, and in an older building it sometimes varies from one end of the wall to the other. Every upright is cut to the angle measured in your home, not to a theoretical one.
- The height at the low point. Below roughly 40 cm you store flat, in drawers or pull-out bins. Above that a short hanging rail becomes possible. This number decides what the unit can actually hold.
- The depth available at floor level. It sets the width of the drawers and determines whether a hinged door can open without hitting the slope.
Sliding or hinged: the real trade-off
A hinged door needs clearance in front of it, and under a slope that clearance quickly meets the low ceiling. A sliding door asks nothing of the room, but it always blocks half the opening and it requires a track, which means a constant height along the top of the unit.
In practice: a narrow corridor or a walkway under the slope calls for sliding. A bedroom where you want to see the whole wardrobe at once is more comfortable with hinged doors, if the height allows. On low projects the answer is often neither: drawers and pull-out bins that come towards you instead of opening upwards.
What fits under a slope
The low zone, the one everyone gives up on, is what pays back most once it is turned into deep drawers: household linen, suitcases, seasonal things. The high part, where you can stand, takes the hanging rail or a bookcase.
A desk sits well under a slope, as long as the seat goes on the high side: you are sitting down, so ceiling height matters less than it does for a unit you stand at. On one of our projects an empty loft became a wardrobe and a desk cut to the exact degree of the slope, with sliding doors that keep the walkway clear.
How we build these pieces
Measuring happens in your home, by hand and point by point, because an old wall is neither straight nor plumb. We then model the unit in 3D to validate volumes and openings before anything is launched.
Fabrication takes place in our 550 m² workshop in Cachan, then we install in your home. A unit built under a slope is installed in sections, never as one block: that is what lets it come up a narrow staircase and be adjusted against a wall that is not straight.
