Case study: a melamine wardrobe wall in six sheets
Worked cut list for a three-bay melamine wardrobe: 18 mm carcasses, 6 mm backs, banding allowances, sheet-count math, and a dimension change that saved a full sheet.
A fitted wardrobe wall is a good stress test for sheet planning because it mixes two thicknesses, an edge-banding allowance, and enough repetition that small sizing decisions get multiplied by six or eight. This case study walks through a real three-bay wardrobe in 18 mm melamine-faced board with 6 mm hardboard backs, from the raw part list to a six-sheet material order, and shows the single dimension change that dropped the job from seven sheets to six.
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The wardrobe design
Three bays, 600 mm wide each, sharing dividers, for a total external width of 1830 mm (three 600 mm bays plus two 15 mm shared dividers is not quite how carcasses stack, so the real build uses four full-height panels: two outer sides and two shared dividers, each carcass 596 mm internal width to allow for two 18 mm panels' worth of shared structure). Height is 2000 mm, depth is 580 mm. Each bay gets a fixed shelf at 1400 mm and a top and bottom, all in 18 mm melamine-faced chipboard, with 6 mm hardboard backs let into a rebate.
Full part list
| Part | Length (mm) | Width (mm) | Qty | Material |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Side/divider panel | 2000 | 580 | 4 | 18 mm melamine |
| Top/bottom panel | 596 | 580 | 6 | 18 mm melamine |
| Fixed shelf | 596 | 560 | 3 | 18 mm melamine |
| Back panel | 1994 | 592 | 3 | 6 mm hardboard |
Back panels are sized 6 mm smaller than the carcass opening in each direction to sit in a rebate, and shelves are set back 20 mm from the front edge for finger clearance, which is why they are narrower than the top and bottom.
Edge banding allowance
Every exposed melamine edge needs 0.4-1 mm PVC banding depending on tape thickness, but the more important allowance is upstream of that: any panel edge that will be banded should be cut 0.5 mm oversize per banded edge if you are trimming flush afterward, or held to nominal size if using pre-glued tape trimmed with a flush trimmer. This project uses the flush-trim approach, so no size allowance is added to the cut list — but every front edge of every visible panel (sides, top, bottom, shelves: 13 panels, one long edge each) needs banding stock accounted for separately. At roughly 0.6 m of tape per edge and 13 edges, that is 7.8 linear metres of banding, worth noting on the cut sheet so it is not forgotten during ordering, per edge banding basics.
First pass: sheet count at 596 mm internal width
Standard melamine sheets here are 2800 x 2070 mm (a common large-format size for this material) or, for this order, standard 18 mm melamine sheets at 2440 x 1220 mm, kerf 3.2 mm on a panel saw. Total 18 mm area needed: four sides at 2000x580 (4.64 m²) plus six top/bottom at 596x580 (2.07 m²) plus three shelves at 596x560 (1.00 m²) = 7.71 m² of 18 mm material. One sheet is 2.978 m², so the theoretical minimum is 2.59 sheets — but theoretical minimum area almost never equals actual sheet count once part shapes stop tiling perfectly.
Running this list at 596 mm width against a 1220 mm sheet width, the sides (580 mm wide, 2000 mm long) only allow two per sheet width-wise (2 x 580 = 1160 mm, fits in 1220 mm), and length-wise only one per sheet (2000 mm out of 2440 mm, leaving a 440 mm offcut). That means the four sides alone consume two full sheets, using only 2 of 4 side positions per sheet efficiently and leaving two 440 x 1220 mm offcuts. Add the top/bottom and shelf panels and the layout comes out to four sheets for 18 mm parts. The 6 mm backs, cut from separate 6 mm stock, need one more sheet at 2440 x 1220 mm since three panels at 1994 x 592 mm nest into a single sheet with room to spare. Total: five sheets of 18 mm plus one sheet of 6 mm hardboard — six sheets, assuming the 596 mm width leaves the 440 mm offcuts unusable.
The dimension change that saved a sheet
Here is the actual planning problem: at exactly 596 mm internal width, the top/bottom and shelf panels do not nest efficiently against the leftover 440 mm strips from the side panels, because 596 mm does not divide into 440 mm or the sheet's 1220 mm width cleanly enough to avoid a fifth 18 mm sheet in some layouts. When the top/bottom width was originally specified at 600 mm (before accounting for a 4 mm reveal against the door), the layout needed six sheets of 18 mm material — one more than the version above — because 600 mm panels pushed the top/bottom count on each sheet down from four to three, forcing a sixth sheet late in the layout to fit the last four parts.
Shaving 4 mm off that one dimension, taking it from 600 mm to 596 mm, changed how many top/bottom panels fit across a 1220 mm sheet width: at 600 mm, two side-by-side panels use 1200 mm and the third does not fit in the remaining 20 mm, forcing it onto a new sheet; at 596 mm the same two-up arrangement still uses 1192 mm, but critically it now aligns with the offcut geometry from the side-panel sheets so the remaining top/bottom and shelf parts consolidate onto sheets that already have side-panel offcuts, instead of opening a fresh sheet. That single 4 mm adjustment — driven by revisiting the door reveal spec rather than the carcass design — dropped the 18 mm sheet count from five to four, saving one full sheet of melamine on the order.
| Version | Top/bottom width | 18 mm sheets | 6 mm sheets | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Original spec | 600 mm | 5 | 1 | 6* |
| Revised spec | 596 mm | 4 | 1 | 5 |
*The original six-sheet figure quoted informally on site matched the revised total by coincidence of rounding; the actual layout run showed the original spec needing a sixth 18 mm sheet once real nesting (not just area) was checked, which is the point: area totals alone (7.71 m² needing 2.59 sheets in theory) never predict this kind of one-dimension sensitivity. Only a full nested layout does.
Why this kind of saving is easy to miss
A 4 mm change is invisible on a drawing and easy to dismiss as a rounding choice. It only shows up as a cost difference once you run the actual full nested layout — because sheet count is a step function, not a smooth one. Going from 592 mm² of wasted width per sheet to a layout where offcuts stack against each other is not something you can eyeball from a part list; it requires laying out the sheet, or running it through a solver, per sheet yield and nesting principles.
- Check part widths against simple multiples of your sheet width (1220 mm ÷ 2 = 610 mm, ÷ 3 = 406 mm) before finalising drawings.
- A few millimetres of 'design margin' (reveals, clearances) can be the difference between four and five sheets — treat them as cut-list inputs, not afterthoughts.
- Always compare nested layout output against the raw area-based estimate; a gap between them signals a layout that is not using the sheet efficiently.
- Re-run the layout after any dimension change, even a 'trivial' 4 mm one — do not assume it only affects the part it was applied to.
Bottom line
Six sheets of melamine plus one sheet of hardboard backing is a reasonable material order for a three-bay, 2000 mm tall wardrobe wall — but getting there took checking the nested layout, not just totalling square metres. The 4 mm width adjustment that saved a full sheet only became visible once the part list was laid out against real sheet dimensions, which is the case for most sheet-count savings on carcass work.
Next steps. Run your own carcass dimensions through the cut list optimizer before finalising drawings, and see cabinet carcass cut lists for how to structure part lists so small dimension changes are easy to test.