Dreaming about wardrobe
Two dreams share this object and they are not related. A wardrobe full of clothes that are not yours, and a wardrobe with something in it, which is a childhood fear that persists into adult reports more than people expect.
Also searched as: a cupboard, a closet, clothes in a wardrobe, something in the wardrobe, a wardrobe door
Clothes that are not the dreamer's is the commoner report and is described with puzzlement rather than alarm. Dreamers frequently report knowing whose they are without evidence.
Something in the wardrobe is the childhood version and it persists. Adults report it, and report the specific structure of a door slightly open and not being able to look.
A wardrobe leading somewhere is reported by a noticeable number of dreamers and is almost entirely supplied by one very famous book, which is worth being honest about.
An empty wardrobe is a small and quite bleak report and belongs with the moving-house material.
Common associations
- Clothes that are not yours, with certainty about whose.
- A door not quite shut, in the childhood version.
- A route elsewhere, supplied by fiction.
- Emptiness, in the moving reports.
Positive readings
The route-elsewhere version is reported with delight and is one of the clearer cases of a cultural image producing a pleasant dream.
Being honest about where it comes from does not diminish it.
Difficult readings
The something-in-it version produces genuine unease and shares its mechanism with the under-the-bed and dark-space reports: a threat that cannot be resolved because it is never seen.
It is worth saying that its persistence into adulthood is ordinary rather than odd.
Psychological perspectives
A partly open door onto an unlit enclosed space is close to an ideal unresolvable-threat setup: something could be there, nothing can be checked, and the vigilance does not settle.
That is the same structure the darkness, basement and cave entries describe, in a much smaller container.
The not-mine clothes are the usual unearned certainty about ownership, which the house entry describes from the other direction.
Cultural and historical
The wardrobe as a passage is one of the most successful single images in twentieth-century children's fiction and it is unusually traceable, which makes it a good case study in cultural supply.
The monster in the cupboard is transmitted to children deliberately and repeatedly and then persists, which is worth noticing about how dream content is inherited.
What the sleep science says
Reasonably supported: unresolvable threat cues sustain unease with nothing present.
Reasonably supported: dreams supply ownership and identity without evidence.
Not established: any meaning for a wardrobe.
Your own context
- Whose clothes were they?
- How did you know?
- Was the door shut?
- Did you look?
If this recurs
Log by version. The clothes and the something-in-it are two dreams that share furniture, and they recur independently.
Emotions often reported
- unease
- confusion
- dread
- curiosity
- wonder
- alarm
Specific wardrobe dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
Where it happened
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Whose clothes were in it?
- Was the door open?
- Did I look inside?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
No sources are attached to this page yet. It has not been through editorial review. How we review material
Related records
- SymbolClothesClothes in dreams are reported through inappropriateness rather than through the garments. The recurring situation is being dressed wrongly for where you are, and discovering it in front of people.
- SymbolDarknessDarkness in dreams is not the absence of an image. Dreamers describe an active inability to see, frequently with light sources that do not work, and that failure is one of the most reliable features of dream perception.
- PlaceBedroomThe bedroom is the one setting where a dream can be mistaken for the room you are actually in, and that makes it different from every other entry here. A large share of frightening bedroom dreams are sleep paralysis rather than dreams about a bedroom.
- SymbolBloodBlood in dreams is reported far more often as vitality, kinship or alarm than as violence. The most useful question is whose it was, and whether anyone in the dream reacted.
- SymbolBridgeBridges are transition made literal, and they are almost always reported with a decision attached: cross, turn back, or find that the bridge will not hold.
- SymbolClockClocks in dreams are notoriously unreliable, the time changes when you look twice, and that instability is a well-known feature of dreaming rather than a symbol. Where clocks do carry meaning, it is almost always about lateness.
Figures people report during these dreams
From the archives, and held to their own evidence standard rather than to the one on this page. Reported alongside wardrobe often enough to be worth naming.