Case Study: A Whole-House Bespoke Joinery Scheme with Duncan Glenn Joinery
Client: Duncan Glenn Joinery
Project Type: Multi-project bespoke joinery - design, CAD drawings & construction packs across nine rooms
Partnership: CAD Design support for Duncan Glenn Joinery
Location: Private residential property
From first sketch to nine finished rooms: a full-house trade collaboration.
At Clifford Design House, most of our trade projects are a single room, a single brief and a single set of drawings. This project with Duncan Glenn Joinery was something else entirely - a full family home, worked through room by room over several months, with every piece of joinery in the house designed to feel like part of one scheme rather than nine separate jobs.
The house belongs to a couple whose brief touched almost every room they lived in: bedrooms, dressing rooms, a study, a drawing room, hallway storage and loft space. Duncan Glenn Joinery brought the trade skill and the client relationship across the whole build; our role was to provide workable drawings co-ordinated with Duncan’s surveys and build methods.
The Brief
The brief across the house was consistent in spirit even where it varied in detail. Each room needed bespoke, fitted joinery that worked hard for the space available - storage, display, dressing and workspace, often combined within a single run of cabinetry - adding character and charm to a lovely new build property.
Running through the whole house was a shared material language - soft painted finishes in muted, characterful tones, warm oak internals, and a considered approach to ironmongery, whether that meant reeded brass bar pulls, knurled knobs or a striking two-tone handle design. The challenge wasn't just designing nine good rooms; it was making sure they read as one home.
Our role: CAD Design & construction detailing, room by room
For every room in the house, we took a concept provided by the end client’s designer and turned each one into a fully resolved, buildable design.
What we provided, consistently across all nine rooms:
Full 3D CAD design and multiple rendered views for every space, showing each piece of joinery in context against the room's real proportions, doors, ceilings and existing features
Complete specification sheets for every room - external and internal finishes, handle choices and any glass, mirror or lighting detail, confirmed and swatched before manufacture
Detailed elevations, plans and sections, down to individual component level where needed for CNC production
Full construction packs breaking larger pieces into their component sub-assemblies, ready to take straight into the workshop
A running revision history for every room, so Duncan Glenn Joinery always had an accurate, current pack to build from as the design evolved
The Design Challenge
One of the main challenges was keeping nine rooms speaking the same language! With this many spaces in development at once, the real design task was consistency without repetition - reusing the same finish palette, handles and detailing conventions from room to room, while still giving each space its own identity suited to its function and its occupant.
A tour of the rooms
Bedroom 1 - TV, fireplace and storage wall.
The main bedroom's chimney breast wall was designed to do four jobs at once: house a wall-mounted TV and an inset electric fire in clean symmetry, break the composition with a column of mirror-backed open shelving, and anchor the far end with a tall cupboard fitted out with a distinctive herringbone-angled shelf run. A soft "Cold Brew" painted finish, oak-lined interiors and reeded bar handles tie it back to the scheme, with a concealed AC slot and access panel keeping the detailing quiet.
Bedroom 1 - dressing room.
Leading directly off the main bedroom, this run of eight matching doors continues the same taupe finish and reeded handles around the corner of the room and into the apex of the ceiling, some fronted in reeded glass to break up the run. Full-height hanging sits either side of a central bank of drawers and a slim, LED-lit shelving column, with a small drawer unit built into the corner return for a discreet dressing area.
Bedroom 2 - a dressing recess built around an arch.
Bedroom 2's centrepiece is a lit, half-round mirror set into an arched recess, with a glass worktop, concealed cable grommet and single drawer beneath - a proper dressing station rather than an afterthought. Matching wardrobes flank it, one fitted with open shelving and hanging, the other with a bank of four deep drawers, so the storage is tailored rather than mirrored for its own sake.
Bedroom 4 & Bedroom 5 - two wardrobes, two characters!
Both remaining bedrooms needed a fitted wardrobe and dressing desk, and each was given its own identity within the shared palette. Bedroom 5 pairs a muted olive-green paint finish with full-height brass bar handles and a cable-grommeted desk. Bedroom 4 takes a softer cream finish and a striking two-tone circular handle - half reeded timber, half brushed brass - the one detail that gives the room its own quiet personality.
The Study - a hidden desk that rises when required.
A full-height wall of shelving and cabinetry, in deep "Coat Cargo" paint with oak interiors and brass Barrington knobs, is built around a mechanised desk that lifts from the lower cabinetry on demand and disappears again behind a brass-inlaid panel when not in use. Every open shelf is LED-lit, with a central panel kept clear as a dedicated space for artwork.
The Drawing Room - a matched pair either side of the door.
Two bookcases, built into matching alcoves either side of a set of double doors, pair a near-black "Gumption" painted exterior with pale, bleached oak shelving and open, LED-lit display above shaker-style cabinet doors. Getting the two sides to read as a genuine mirror image of one another - carcass depths, shelf dividers, paint finish - took several rounds of refinement.
Loft Storage - fitting joinery to a roofline.
Set into the eaves, three sliding wardrobe doors in a dark Roble Newman veneer, inlaid with antiqued mirror glass, were built to follow the pitch of the roof exactly, with a corner shelving unit tapering into the apex. Behind the doors, open hanging and a bank of drawers make the most of a space where every centimetre of headroom counts.
Coat Cupboards - storage disguised as wall.
Tucked into a hallway, this cupboard is built to disappear: full-height reeded timber panelling runs wall to wall, with the door detailed to the same slat spacing as the panelling either side, so it reads as part of the wall rather than a door in its own right. Open it, and it's a fully fitted cupboard with double hanging rails and open shelving.
The Outcome
Across nine rooms, the result is a house where every piece of fitted joinery feels considered on its own terms and consistent as a whole - the same restrained palette of finishes and handle language recurring from bedroom to study to drawing room, while each space solves its own particular problem, whether that's a sloped loft ceiling, a period alcove, or a dressing table that needed somewhere to go. Nothing in the house looks like an afterthought, and nothing looks like it was designed in isolation from everything else.
Why this collaboration worked
A project of this scale only works with a reliable drawing process behind it. Duncan Glenn Joinery needed a design partner who could hold the whole house in view - keeping the material palette and detailing consistent from room to room - while still giving each space the individual attention it needed, and revising accurately and quickly as each design developed on site.
Carrying every room from first sketch through to a construction-ready pack, and keeping that process consistent across nine rooms and several months, is exactly what allowed the build to stay on track from one end of the house to the other.
This is exactly the kind of project our trade service is built for: sustained design support across a whole build, not just a single piece, giving the maker confidence that every room they build will sit together as one finished home.
Services used on this project
CAD Studio - 3D modelling, elevations, specification drawings and client-facing visuals
CNC Supply - Components cut from our CNC service, as provided by Elite Carpentry Services, including the curved end panel
Design Support - Brief interpretation, material and finish specification, design resolution
Working on a similar project? Whether you have a sketch, a set of measurements, or just a brief conversation to start with, we'd love to hear about it.
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