Where do I find my IKEA PAX design code?

Short answer: in IKEA's PAX planner, press Finalise. Your design code is at the bottom of that page. Any change to the design gives it a new code, so keep the newest one.

That code is all I need to open your design exactly as you left it. I build PAX in across London, wall to wall and up to the ceiling, and it starts from that code.

Getting the code, step by step

1. Finish your design in IKEA's PAX planner.
2. Press Finalise. The design code is at the bottom of the page.
3. Or press the share button. It gives you a link to the design, or emails you the design and its code.
4. Keep the code somewhere safe. A screenshot does it: without the code, the design can't be opened again.

Changed something after that, even one shelf? The design now has a new code. Send me the last one.

What I do with it

I open your design in IKEA's planner on my computer and see the frames, doors and insides as you chose them. A share link works just as well as a code. Screenshots, or IKEA's list of parts, help too if you have them.

A design in IKEA's planner for a loft in Palmers Green: 199.8 cm wide, 201.2 cm high, 58 cm deep. The finished job.

What the inside looks like, built

The insides you pick in the planner are IKEA's too: rails, shelves, drawers and wire baskets. This is how they look in PAX wardrobes I've built in.

Left: Finchley, a shelf at the top, rails, and drawers under a shelf. Right: a Palmers Green loft, hanging with wire baskets underneath.

Left: the same loft before the doors went on. Right: wire baskets in a wardrobe round a chimney breast, also in Palmers Green.

What I check first

These are the things that catch people out, so I look at them before anything else:

• The width. PAX frames are sold as 100, 75 and 50 cm wide but measure 998, 748 and 498 mm. At least 20 mm has to be left at each end, so the fillers can be scribed to the walls. (The sums for common walls.)
• The height. Frames are 201 or 236 cm high. If 300 mm or more is left above the frame, it gets an MDF top box with its own doors. Less than that gets an infill strip scribed to the ceiling. A ceiling lower than about 2030 mm won't take a PAX frame at all. (Which height fits your ceiling.)
• Any 75 cm frame. IKEA makes no hinged doors for it, so in a run of hinged doors it gets a pair of MDF doors made to measure.
• The depth, in an alcove. A frame is 58 cm deep before the doors go on.

What I make round it

Your IKEA design is the frames, the doors and the insides. What makes it look built in is everything round it, and that is the part I make, in MDF ready for your decorator:

• Fillers at each end, scribed to the walls
• A top box or an infill strip up to the ceiling
• A plinth, if you want one
• End panels wherever the side of a frame would show
• Doors made to measure, if you'd rather not have IKEA's, and on any 75 frame

In blue, the part I make. You order the PAX from IKEA, and I build it, fit it and close it in.

Send it to me

The quickest way is Send me your IKEA design in my wardrobe planner. Paste the code or the link, tick what you'd like from me, add screenshots if you have them, and your name with a mobile or email. It comes straight to me, and I reply within 24 hours.

Then a free visit to measure up, and your quote, free as well. Rough sizes are fine: I measure properly on the visit.

Not designed it yet?

Start with which PAX height fits your ceiling and fitting PAX wall to wall. Still deciding? PAX or a made-to-measure wardrobe. Want to see one finished? A five-door PAX wardrobe in Finchley.