Furniture · Back of house
Hotel back-of-house furniture: laundry boxes, housekeeping units, storage
A hotel laundry box is not a design object, and that is exactly why it is worth specifying properly. Back-of-house furniture takes more daily abuse than anything in a guest room: laundry boxes are pushed down corridors several times a shift, linen cabinets are loaded past their sensible capacity, and luggage racks are dropped rather than set down. The workshop produces laundry boxes on castors, linen and housekeeping cabinets, minibar units and luggage racks, in solid teak where the piece is seen by guests and in plywood with an HPL face where it is not. This page sets out the typical ranges. Every piece is made to size.
Typical use
Hotel
The full back-of-house package ordered with the guest room furniture, in the same container: laundry boxes for each housekeeping floor, linen cabinets sized to the service room rather than to a catalogue, minibar units built into the guest room joinery, and luggage racks per key. Buying it together is what keeps the unit cost sensible, because these pieces are cheap individually and expensive to ship alone.
Resort
Longer corridors and outdoor service routes change the specification more than the room count does. A laundry box crossing an open walkway between blocks needs larger castors, a lid that stays shut, and a timber and finish that tolerate being rained on, none of which a purely indoor unit requires.
Restaurant or beach club
Service storage rather than housekeeping: linen and cutlery cabinets, stock units behind a bar, and mobile boxes for cushions and towels that come in at close. Cushion storage is the case most often forgotten at specification stage and the one staff notice first.
Specification
Typical ranges, all pieces made to size.
The figures below describe what the workshop typically works within. They are not a list of available formats and not a statement of capacity: every piece is cut to the dimensions on your drawings.
| Laundry box, body | Typical width 600 to 900 mm, typical depth 450 to 600 mm |
|---|---|
| Laundry box, height | Typical 600 to 750 mm to the lid, set by comfortable loading height |
| Castors | Typical 50 to 75 mm diameter, two fixed and two swivel, brakes on request |
| Lid | Hinged with a stay, or removable, with a recessed pull |
| Linen cabinet | Typical width 900 to 1,800 mm, typical height 1,800 to 2,100 mm |
| Shelf pitch | Adjustable, typical 250 to 400 mm, set by the linen stack height |
| Minibar unit | Typical width 500 to 700 mm, drawn around the appliance you specify |
| Luggage rack | Typical 600 to 750 mm wide, typical height 450 to 550 mm, folding or fixed |
| Carcass, seen positions | Solid teak, or teak-faced with solid edges and rails |
| Carcass, unseen positions | Marine or exterior grade plywood with an HPL face, teak edging on request |
Dimensioned schematic
Indicative only. The dimensions shown are typical ranges, not a drawing of a specific piece, and they do not describe a workshop capacity. Your own drawings govern.
Materials and finishes
For pieces a guest sees, and for anything on an outdoor service route. FSC chain-of-custody documentation travels with the timber.
For service rooms and unseen carcasses. Wipe-clean, dimensionally stable, lower cost per unit than solid timber.
Hinges, stays, pulls and castor mounts. Specified where a piece is handled many times a day.
Finishes
- Oiled
- For teak pieces in guest-facing positions. Re-oiled on the property's own maintenance schedule.
- Natural
- For service pieces where appearance matters less than not needing attention.
- Stained
- Used to match back-of-house joinery to an existing guest room palette.
Hardware
Solid brass for hinges, lid stays, recessed pulls and castor mounts, because these are the components that fail first on a piece handled dozens of times a day. Castors are specified by wheel diameter and by surface: a small hard wheel is fine on a smooth service floor and useless on a tiled outdoor walkway.
Order details
- Minimum order
- Quoted per project rather than per piece. Hospitality projects start from €25,000, typically one 20ft container. Back-of-house furniture on its own rarely reaches that figure, which is why it is normally ordered alongside the guest room package.
- Lead time
- The workshop's typical production time is 8 to 10 weeks from the moment drawings and finishes are signed off. Door to door, the typical timing is 12 to 20 weeks depending on destination.
- Packing
- Each piece is wrapped in protective material and crated or blanket-wrapped for container loading. Packing, quality control before loading and the sea freight booking are the workshop's, through its freight forwarders. HS classification is confirmed with the freight forwarder before each shipment leaves Bali.
- To quote, the workshop needs
- Dimensioned drawings or a measured schedule, quantities by type, and the delivery country. An indicative customs cost estimate can be prepared at quotation stage once the destination is known.
Notes on specification
Back-of-house furniture is specified from the service room outward, not from a product list inward. The useful starting point is a dimensioned plan of the housekeeping room, the corridor width, the lift car size and the door openings on the route between them. A linen cabinet drawn to the wall it will stand against uses the room properly; the same cabinet bought in a nominal size leaves dead space at one end and blocks a door at the other.
The lift car and the narrowest doorway on the route set the hard limit for a laundry box. It is worth measuring both before anything is drawn, because a box that does not fit the lift is not a box that can be worked around. Corridor surface matters almost as much, since it determines castor diameter, and castor diameter is the single most common reason a back-of-house piece gets replaced early.
Questions
Why order back-of-house furniture from Bali rather than locally?
Usually because it is travelling with the rest of the order. These pieces are inexpensive per unit and bulky, so shipping them alone rarely makes sense: the fixed cost of the shipment overwhelms the saving on the furniture. Added to a container already going to the property, the marginal shipping cost is small and the pieces are made to the service room's actual dimensions.
What is the difference between the teak and the HPL plywood option?
Cost, weight and where the piece is going to live. Solid teak is specified for anything a guest sees and for anything on an outdoor service route, where it tolerates weather that a board product does not. Plywood with an HPL face is specified for service rooms and unseen carcasses: it is dimensionally stable, wipes clean, and costs less per unit. A single order commonly uses both, teak on the guest-facing pieces and HPL behind the service door.
Can minibar units be built around appliances we already use?
Yes, and that is the normal approach, but the appliance has to be specified before the unit is drawn. Send the make, model and the manufacturer's dimensioned drawing, including the ventilation clearance and which side the door hinges. The unit is then drawn around it. Without that, the opening gets drawn to a nominal figure and the appliance does not fit, which is not correctable after the container is loaded.
What documentation travels with a back-of-house shipment?
The workshop supplies FSC chain-of-custody certificates for plantation teak, and SVLK Indonesian timber legality documentation. HS classification is confirmed with the freight forwarder before each shipment leaves Bali, and an indicative customs cost estimate can be prepared at quotation stage.
Start a project.
Send the drawings, the quantities and the delivery country. A reply follows within 48 hours by email.
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