Media walls, alcove units and built-in shelving from four generations of the Roche family. Designed in your home and built to measure.
Most Dublin living rooms were never planned around a flat-screen television, a games console and a family’s worth of books. In older houses there’s a chimney breast in the middle of the main wall, an alcove either side of it, and not one wall that’s truly straight.
Flat-pack furniture is made for a room that doesn’t exist. Bespoke living room furniture is made for yours. A media wall is built to the exact width of the chimney breast, alcove units are cut to the alcove they’ll sit in, and shelving goes where you want it, not where a standard size allows.
That’s what we do at Oakline. We come to your home anywhere in Dublin, measure the room and design the furniture around it. Then we build it and look after the installation.
A built-in TV wall does three jobs. It frames the television so it stops dominating the room, it hides the cables and boxes behind doors, and it gives you storage you didn’t have before.
Every bespoke TV unit is drawn for the wall it will sit on. In a Dublin period home that usually means working with the fireplace: a built-in TV unit with the fireplace below or beside it, and the alcoves either side put to use.
We’ll talk through what needs to live in it. A custom media unit can take a sound bar, a games console and a router, with cable routing built in and doors or open shelves wherever you’d rather have them.
The alcoves either side of a chimney breast are the most wasted space in a Dublin living room. They’re rarely the same width as each other, and the walls lean. Off-the-shelf units leave a gap down one side and a filler strip down the other.
Built-in alcove units are measured for each alcove separately, so both sides look right. The usual arrangement is cupboards below and shelving above, with the depth and shelf spacing chosen for what you’ll keep there. Alcove cabinets and shelves can be painted to suit the room, like this piece finished in Farrow & Ball Calamine, or finished to show the timber.
If you’ve been searching for a carpenter for alcove units in Dublin, start with our guide to making the most of alcoves.
Fitted bookshelves do what a loose bookcase can’t. They run floor to ceiling, follow the skirting and cornice, and never wobble. A living room bookcase built this way becomes part of the house.
Instead of loose wall decor for a living room, built-in display shelving gives photographs, ornaments and the things you’ve collected a proper place. Open shelves, glazed doors or a mix of both; it’s your call.
Bespoke bookcases are a speciality of ours. Read about our bespoke bookshelf design service, the Libris Programme, which covers bookcases for living rooms as well as studies.
Some customers want one piece. Others want the whole wall, or the whole room, done at once: a TV wall on the chimney breast, cupboards and shelves in the alcoves either side, and shelving on the return wall, all drawn as one design.
Planning fitted living room furniture this way means the living room wall units share the same finish, the same proportions and the same handles. The room reads as one piece of joinery rather than three separate purchases. We’ve done this in living rooms across Dublin, in period houses and newer homes alike.
We make the furniture rather than the whole scheme, so if you’re planning the living room interior design as a whole, we’ll build to fit it. For the wider picture, see our page on living room design and decoration.
Not every home has a spare room for an office. A built-in desk in an alcove, or a study corner at one end of the living room, gives you somewhere to work that can be tidied away when you finish.
Home study design follows the same rules as the rest of the room: measure the space, decide what has to fit, then build to suit. Desk depth, shelving and cable routing are all worked out in advance, so study room decoration isn’t spoiled by a trailing extension lead.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, RTÉ presenter and journalist Brian Dobson was seen on RTÉ working from his Oakline custom-made home office. See more on our home office and bookcase page.
Leave your details and we’ll be in touch to arrange a home visit.
Call 01 4977435 or email info@oakline.ie.
Every piece is priced from its own drawing, so there’s no list price. These are the things that move the figure up or down:
So alcove units cost less when they’re simple open shelving and more when they have doors, drawers and lighting. The cost of a TV wall follows the same logic, in Ireland as anywhere else.
Call 01 4977435 for a free quote, or book a home design consultation and we’ll price your room from a proper drawing.
Five practical design ideas for a living room, all drawn from furniture we actually build.
The space either side of the chimney breast is dead until something is built into it. Cupboards below and shelves above turn it into the most useful storage in the room.
Put the television, the sound bar and every cable into one unit with doors. The room looks calmer straight away.
Living room designs for small spaces work best with floor-to-ceiling units that are shallow rather than deep. You get the storage without losing floor.
Built-in display shelving holds the things you want to see and hides the things you don’t, which loose shelves and hooks never quite manage.
When you design your living room around built-in furniture, carry the same finish into the hall or study. Our under-stairs storage in a period Dublin home shows how far that idea can go.
Before you start, read the living room decoration mistakes most homeowners make.
Tell us about the room and we’ll arrange a visit.
We see the wall, the alcoves and the fireplace, and measure all of it.
We plan the furniture with you and agree the drawing before anything is made.
Your furniture is built to the agreed design.
We fit it and manage any subcontract work.
If something needs adjusting later, we come back.
John bought four units from Oakline over 20 years ago and is still delighted with them. When one needed adjusting, Gearóid came out and explained it step by step, with no upsell.
If you’d like matching joinery through the house, we design and make for other rooms too. The same thinking applies everywhere: heirlooms don’t come in flat pack.
Oakline is a family business based in Ranelagh, Dublin 6. We design and fit living room furniture in homes across Dublin. Bespoke furniture from Ranelagh starts with a phone call or an email, followed by a visit to your home.
Book a Home Design Consultation
You can also reach us through our contact page.
Yes. We’re based in Ranelagh, Dublin 6, and design and fit them in homes across Dublin. Call 01 4977435 to check your area.
Yes. Each alcove is measured separately, so the units fit even when the two sides are different widths or the walls aren’t straight. A TV unit can be built in with the fireplace below or beside it.
Every piece is priced from its own drawing, so there’s no list price. The size of the unit, the materials and finish, what goes inside it and the condition of the walls all affect the cost. Call 01 4977435 for a free quote.
Yes. All our shelving and bookcases are built to measure, with no standard sizes. Our bookshelf design service is called the Libris Programme.
Yes. Built-to-measure furniture suits small rooms well, because it can be made shallower, taller and exactly the width of the wall, with nothing wasted.
No. Our Ranelagh showroom is no longer open. Our designers come to your home to measure and plan, and we go through finishes and colours with you at the design stage. You can see examples of our work on this site and our blog.
Yes. We look after everything from designing the layout to the final installation, including managing any subcontract work.
Tell us a little about the room and what you’d like built, and we’ll get back to you to arrange a home visit.
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