Bespoke Fitted Furniture for a Home in Docking, North Norfolk
New-build homes can be a brilliant blank canvas, but they don't always come with the storage or individual details that make a house really feel like home.
For this project in Docking, North Norfolk, our clients had a beautiful, spacious living area and one very large blank wall. Rather than filling it with several separate pieces of furniture, we saw an opportunity to create something completely bespoke, designed around the room and the way they wanted to use it.
The result is an eight-metre-wide fitted wall combining bookshelves, concealed storage, a media area and cocktail bar. It gave the room much-needed storage, but just as importantly, it created a focal point and brought character to the new-build interior.
The Design Brief
The starting point was a large open-plan living and dining space with an impressive blank wall, measuring almost eight metres wide and 3.2 metres high.
Our clients wanted plenty of storage and display space, somewhere for books and favourite objects, a home for the television and media equipment, and a bar for entertaining.
With a wall of this scale, the furniture needed to feel properly considered. Too small and it would have looked lost. Too heavy and it could easily have dominated the room.
The brief became about using the full scale of the space while creating something that felt as though it belonged in the house from the beginning.
Our Design Approach
We designed the furniture as one complete installation rather than a collection of separate units.
Painted cabinetry and tongue-and-groove panelling were combined with solid oak shelving to bring warmth and texture into the room. Open shelving created space for books and objects, while drawers and closed storage gave all the everyday things somewhere to disappear.
The television and media equipment were incorporated into the design rather than treated as a separate TV unit, helping the whole wall feel calmer and more cohesive.
A removable library ladder allowed us to use the full height of the room and reach the highest shelves, turning what could have been wasted space into useful storage.
Take a Look Around
A closer look at the bespoke living room furniture, cocktail bar and storage designed for this new-build home in Docking, North Norfolk.
Favourite Details
The Cocktail Bar
Probably our favourite part of the whole piece.
The fully integrated cocktail bar sits within the cabinetry and includes an antique mirror splashback, integrated LED lighting and bespoke shelving for bottles, glasses and barware.
When it's open it becomes a feature in its own right, but when everything is closed it sits comfortably within the rest of the furniture.
The Small Details
Storage That Works Around the Room
One of the advantages of designing something completely bespoke is being able to start with what actually needs to live in the room.
Books and favourite objects have space to be displayed, the television and media equipment are integrated into the furniture, while drawers and cupboards take care of the things that don't necessarily need to be on show.
Instead of trying to find several pieces of furniture to fit a very large room, everything was considered as part of one design.
Some of our favourite details are the ones you barely notice once a room is finished.
We carefully sourced paintable electrical sockets so standard white sockets wouldn't interrupt the cabinetry and panelling. It's a small detail, but exactly the sort of thing that makes the finished furniture feel properly integrated into the room.
We also re-oiled and refreshed our clients' existing table. There was no reason to replace a perfectly good piece of furniture, and once refreshed it worked beautifully alongside the new oak shelving.
More Than Just the Living Room
Our work with these clients didn't stop here. We also designed fitted furniture for the bedrooms, creating practical storage that worked with the house and continuing the same considered approach through other areas of their home.
Although kitchens are a big part of what we do, Fox & Bear has always been about more than kitchens. We design fitted furniture and interiors for the whole home, from bedrooms and dressing rooms to living spaces, studies, libraries and bespoke storage.
For newer homes in particular, bespoke furniture can turn a blank wall or a room that's short on storage into something that feels much more personal to the people living there.
Thinking About Your Own Project?
Every project starts with a conversation.
If you're planning fitted furniture for a new-build home, looking for better storage or simply have a room that doesn't quite feel finished, we'd love to hear about it.
From our Fakenham studio, we design kitchens, fitted furniture and whole-home interiors for clients across Norfolk and North Norfolk, with every project designed around the property and the way you live.