The Best Canvas Wardrobes For Bedroom Storage

The wardrobe is an invaluable part of our bedroom furniture collection. With a good wardrobe, you can keep your swankiest clothes free from creases by hanging them up, avoiding any unnecessary and time-consuming folding. Because of this, quality wardrobes are best used for storing suit jackets and smart trousers, formal dresses and shirts, as well as your finest pair of jeans.

While there’s no denying that wardrobes help to make our lives that much easier, you can’t ignore their often super-sized design. Wardrobes, particularly the solid wood kind, take up a large amount of floor space in your bedroom - and that’s before you even account for the space needed to open their doors. Not to mention, they’re pretty heavy too, which can make them difficult to move around. Consider the fact that most bedrooms are at the top of at least one flight of stairs, and you can see where the problems begin...

In some cases, you can buy wardrobes that come flat-packed and unassembled, letting you transport each piece up your stairs individually. But, once you’ve lugged the wardrobe up to your bedroom, you still have to assemble it - and once you do, it’s no easier to move than a traditional wardrobe. So what’s the answer? Canvas wardrobes! 

Always ready and willing to help our customers, OnBuy has prepared this guide to the best canvas wardrobes for bedroom storage. We’ll answer the most pressing questions you have about this kind of wardrobe and suggest a few of our favourites to help you make the right choice for your bedroom.

What are canvas wardrobes?

Canvas wardrobes (or fabric wardrobes, as they’re sometimes called) are wardrobes that have side, front and back panels made from a form of fabric material rather than wood or fibreboard. Mostly, this fabric is made from a poly-cotton blend, although occasionally you’ll find canvas wardrobes made from pure cotton or polyester instead.

Their canvas panelling is the most obvious thing that sets apart fabric wardrobes from their wooden counterparts, their frame is another. Since the flexibility of poly-cotton means that a canvas wardrobe won’t stand up by itself, each one requires a frame to give it strength. These frames are skeletal, with plenty of gaps in between each strut, bracket and brace. Sometimes these frames are made from metal, sometimes plastic and other wardrobes have wooden frames. Almost all canvas wardrobe frames incorporate shelving as well as a clothes hanger into their body to make storing clothes easier and more convenient.

Canvas wardrobes are a terrific choice for people who move house often. They’re so easy to transport. Their canvas panels weigh next to nothing and can be rolled or folded up tightly. The vast majority of fabric wardrobe frames can be pulled apart and put back together again in very little time, and the individual parts are often no bigger than a rolled up poster. Fabric wardrobes are probably the only kind of wardrobe around that you can easily fit into a cardboard box. If you move home often because of your job or because you live in rented accommodation, a canvas wardrobe will save you a lot of headaches come moving day.

Another benefit of canvas wardrobes is that, because their fronts are made from flexible fabric, they don’t need the same amount of space in front of them that a normal wardrobe does (as their doors don’t open outwards). Instead, fabric wardrobes have one or more flaps that roll either upwards or to the side like the entrance of a tarpaulin tent. This means you can keep your wardrobe in an alcove, or very close to your bed or other furniture, while still being able to access all your clothes.

The final positive that all fabric wardrobes share is their low cost. Even the least expensive wooden and fibreboard wardrobes regularly cost upwards of three figures. Fabric wardrobes are significantly cheaper than that, thanks to their basic construction. 

Now that we’ve given a brief description of canvas wardrobes as a whole, let’s look at a few examples in greater detail and see what each one offers!

We’re kicking our wardrobes list off with an entry from one of the most popular lifestyle brands on OnBuy, VidaXL. The VidaXL Black Fabric Wardrobe is actually the slimmest canvas wardrobe in this guide, measuring 87cm wide and 49cm deep. That’s still enough room to fit a decent selection of clothes inside, and it will fit nicely into the recess between a room’s corner and a fireplace!

Something else that goes into the pros column for this fabric wardrobe is the three storage boxes that sit underneath the main storage boxes. White woven fabric handles let you tug each box out smoothly without disturbing the others. They also provide a nice contrasting detail against the main black fabric.

The slim size of the VidaXL Black Fabric wardrobe comes with a set of sacrifices, though. Unless you dress minimally, this wardrobe is unlikely to hold all of your clothes, meaning you might have to pair it with another piece of bedroom furniture like a chest of drawers. Another problem for those with a larger collection of clothes is that this canvas wardrobe has only a single clothes shelf in its central compartment, which makes storing and organising garments quite difficult.

The CellDeal Canvas Wardrobe is a stellar choice for people who love an organised clothing collection. This wardrobe has ten small compartments that lie on either side of the main hanging area, and there’s a short but wide compartment for shoes or suitcases underneath that. However you like to arrange your garment collection, the CellDeal wardrobe can accommodate you. It’ll also accommodate a lot of clothes too, as there’s ample storage space available when you add all of the compartments together. The CellDeal Canvas Wardrobe is available in three colours: grey, black and a light brown coffee colour.

This is a great fabric wardrobe, but it isn’t perfect. As the compartments are set up the way they are, the clothes rail doesn’t extend as far as it could. So, while you can hang long clothes up, you can’t hang too many at a time. Another issue, albeit a minor one, is that there’s no clearance under the wardrobe. Unlike many canvas wardrobes, the CellDeal doesn’t have any legs, so you can’t store any thin objects underneath it.

If there’s such a thing as a standard canvas wardrobe, the Three Panel Black Canvas Wardrobe is probably it! This canvas wardrobe measures a little over 134cm from one end to another and has 12 compartments in the same configuration as the CellDeal wardrobe. You can fit all sorts of clothes inside or you can store other objects in it too, courtesy of the three rigid fabric boxes that are included with this wardrobe. The length of the wardrobe’s central compartment will let you hang up most of your clothes. A set of small feet elevate the wardrobe off the ground without compromising on its stability.

Although you can store heavy things in the Three Panel Black Canvas Wardrobe, we’d advise you err on the side of caution. This is because, while the steel tube frames provide enough support for the weight of clothes, the cloth shelves may sag under the weight of denser objects. The only other downside to this wardrobe is the lack of colour options available. Sure, black never goes out of style, but it would have been nice to have a greater choice all the same!

Most of the fabric wardrobes that you can buy come in the same range of neutral colours. If you like brown, grey or black, that’s fine, but those looking for more vibrant hues may be left disappointed. For a wardrobe with just as much personality as its owner, look no further than the Beautylark Colourful Canvas Wardrobe! This canvas wardrobe is available in three different shades. There’s a rich, lilac purple, a deep, almost navy blue and a bright hot pink. 

These colours are enough for this wardrobe to stand out from the crowd, but it’s got a killer practical feature, too. The nine shelves can be removed if you want, allowing you to customise the shape and number of compartments inside the Beautylark Colourful Canvas Wardrobe to your needs.

The Beautylark Colourful Canvas Wardrobe has a set of fabric dividers that separate the smaller compartments from the larger ones. While these dividers give the wardrobe a pleasing visual symmetry, they can get in the way if you want to store folded clothes on the smaller shelves, as there’s no way they can lie across the edge of the wardrobe’s shelves. 

While we’re on the subject of those shelves, be careful about removing too many of them at once. They might stop you from storing large objects in your wardrobe, but each shelf acts as a cross-beam, giving extra structural integrity to the wardrobe. Remove too many from one side and the whole wardrobe might go a bit lop-sided!

This next product from VidaXL is unlike any of the other canvas wardrobes in this buyer’s guide. That’s because it has a frame made from fresh pinewood rather than plastic. Introducing the stunning VidaXL Pinewood & Fabric Wardrobe. The pinewood is unpainted and unfinished, preserving its natural colour, texture and appearance. The light colour of pine is complemented by the neutral cream colour of the canvas that VidaXL have selected for this wardrobe, giving it an attractive look all-round. This is certainly one of the most visually appealing fabric wardrobes you can buy right now. It’s very sturdy too, as these solid wooden poles are thicker than plastic tubes, and the VidaXL Pinewood & Fabric Wardrobe has a series of thin, plank-like boards that keep any folded clothes you stack on top well supported.

However, despite being its standout feature, the wooden frame isn’t ideal for those looking for an effortlessly flexible storage solution. Once assembled, the wood cannot be broken down again or reconfigured, which minimises the wardrobe’s portability. Pinewood is a softwood, which means it’s fairly light, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble moving it around your room. Fitting it through the door might be another matter, though!

Another consequence of using wood as the building material is that you have to fit it together with screws and an electric drill. It’s far from the most difficult DIY job in the world, but any mistakes you make are permanent. If this sounds like too much, choose a canvas wardrobe with plastic snap-in fittings.

We’ve saved the biggest fabric wardrobe until last! The Beautylark Canvas Wardrobe measures a mammoth 150cm wide, and features a pair of clothes rails that can hold almost all of your shirts and dresses aloft. Unlike most other canvas wardrobes, this grey offering from Beautylark doesn’t have any shelving underneath the rails, instead going for a central column of shelves. This means that even the longest dresses and overcoats won’t get crumpled when you hang them.

150cm is great if you have the space for such a hearty wardrobe, but it’s less of a selling point if you’re looking for something that can fit into a small bedroom. This wardrobe’s long feet are likewise a bit of a mixed bag. They’re tall enough that you should be able to fit your shoes underneath - certainly handy - but they’re made from hollow plastic, and their length might mean they bend under the weight of a lot of clothes. Try evenly distributing the weight when hanging your clothes up to combat this.

We’ve reached the end of our canvas wardrobes guide. They’re inexpensive, easily portable and convenient, but they’re not for everyone. If you’d rather consider a different form of wardrobe entirely, head over to our bedroom wardrobes category to see our complete collection, which is part of our bedroom furniture selection. We have traditional wardrobes with doors that swing outwards, as well as a range of sliding door wardrobes. Sliding wardrobes are so popular that we’ve written a separate buyer’s guide for them as well - read it here to get the full run down. Another pair of guides for buyers that might spark your interest is our selection of the best wardrobes for smaller rooms and the best wardrobe organisers. 

Please note: The information in this buyer’s guide is correct at the time of publishing but may be subject to change.