The short answer
If a door sits proud at one corner, closes onto its neighbour or shows a shadow gap that widens from top to bottom, the door is rarely the culprit. In almost every case the carcass it hangs on is not square, or is not fixed rigidly enough to stay square once weight goes into it.
Hinge adjustment moves a door by two or three millimetres in three axes. That is a tuning range, not a repair. When a fitter has run out of adjustment and the gaps still taper, the correction has to happen at the box, the packing behind it or the fixings into the wall.
What a tapering shadow gap is telling you
Read the gaps as a set rather than one at a time. Parallel gaps of consistent width mean the geometry is right and only the hinge cams need setting. Gaps that narrow towards the floor on one door and widen on the next mean the two carcasses are leaning relative to each other.
A gap that is even along its length but too wide overall usually means the door was cut to a nominal size against an opening that was measured before plaster and skirting arrived. A gap that closes hard at one corner only, with the rest sound, points to a single twisted stile or a hinge plate pulled into softened board.
- Even gaps, door rubs the frame: hinge depth adjustment.
- Gap tapers top to bottom: the carcass is out of plumb or racked.
- One corner tight, diagonal opposite loose: the door or the box is in twist.
- Gaps drifted over months: fixings have moved, or the floor has settled.
Why it starts at installation, not later
London bedrooms in Victorian and Edwardian stock rarely give a joiner a plumb wall, a level floor and a square corner in the same room. A fitted run has to be levelled, plumbed and packed into that reality, then locked in place before a single door is hung. Skip that sequence and the box takes up the shape of the room.
The other common origin is fixing into unsuitable substrate. Lath and plaster, dot-and-dab plasterboard on a void, or crumbling lime render will accept a screw and then let it creep under load. Hanging doors, mirrors and drawer sets adds tens of kilos, and the box slowly rotates away from where it was set.
Moisture matters too. A run installed while a room is still drying out from wet trades will move as humidity settles. This is one reason we survey and sequence bespoke work around the rest of a project rather than fitting into a half-finished room.
How the fault is properly corrected
The honest correction starts with measurement, not adjustment. A long level on the stiles, a check of the diagonals across each opening and a gauge of the reveal at several heights will tell you whether the box, the door or the hinge is at fault before anything is unscrewed.
Where the carcass is sound but leaning, it is re-packed at the bearing points, re-plumbed and re-fixed into solid ground, sometimes with a timber batten or resin anchors where the plaster cannot carry load. Where a stile is in twist, the affected panel is replaced rather than persuaded; a twisted component never settles.
Only then are the hinges reset, working from a datum door outwards so tolerances do not accumulate along a run. Soft-close mechanisms are set last, because their damping masks a rub that you want to feel while adjusting.
What good joinery does differently from the outset
Well-made fitted wardrobes are not flat-pack boxes pushed against a wall. The carcasses are built to a rigid specification, scribed to the room, mechanically joined to one another so a run behaves as a single structure, and given face frames or filler pieces that absorb the room's irregularity instead of passing it into the doors.
Hinge choice is part of that. Concealed hinges with genuine three-way adjustment and rated for the door's weight and thickness will hold a heavy veneered or painted door where a lighter pattern will sag. Tall doors get a third or fourth hinge as a matter of course.
Our fitted wardrobe and floor to ceiling wardrobe work is built and installed on that basis, which is why alignment issues are dealt with at survey and set-out rather than in a callback.
When to accept an adjustment and when to ask for more
A single door that has drifted slightly in the first weeks of use is normal and is a hinge job. A run where several gaps taper in sympathy is not a tuning problem and should not be presented as one; the structure needs revisiting.
If doors have been adjusted repeatedly and keep returning to the same fault, the adjustment is fighting something upstream. Ask what the carcasses are fixed into, whether the run was packed level and whether the doors were made after the openings were measured in their finished state.
Frequently asked questions
- Can misaligned wardrobe doors be fixed without removing them?
- Often yes. Where the carcass is true and packed correctly, the whole correction is done at the hinges with the doors in place. If the gaps taper because the box is leaning, the doors come off so the carcass can be re-plumbed and re-fixed.
- Should there be a gap between fitted wardrobe doors at all?
- Yes. A consistent shadow gap of a few millimetres is deliberate. It lets doors open without rubbing, gives room for seasonal movement and reads as a crisp line. The mark of quality is that the gap is even, not that it is absent.
- My doors were fine and have drifted after a year. Is that a defect?
- It depends on the cause. Minor settlement handled by one hinge adjustment is normal. Repeated drift usually means the fixings are not in solid substrate, and that is a workmanship issue worth raising with whoever installed the run.
- Do heavier doors need different hinges?
- They do. Door weight, thickness and height all drive hinge selection and quantity. Fitting a heavy painted or veneered door on hinges intended for a light panel is a common cause of sag that adjustment cannot cure.
Planning a project like this?
SH Joinery surveys every room before quoting, so you get a fixed price against a written specification rather than an estimate. Send us your drawings, photographs or rough sizes and we will come back with an honest view of what your project involves.