How to Plan Your Walk-in Closet
Walk-in closets used to be peculiar to only the wealthy in society, but current fashion trends have made them no longer the exclusive items they once were. Architects these days design most modern residential housing units with bedrooms that have these kinds of closets, and older buildings undergo home renovations that include these closets in their new bedroom plans.
Clothes and their accompanying accessories are valuable items that you should showcase and display; small dark closets that hide these items from being prominently viewed have become anachronistic. Well, designed closets will not only help you keep your clothes and accessories organized, but they will also give you a sense of satisfaction from the way the items can be artfully displayed. The initial and most important, consideration you should think of when designing a closet in home renovations is the appropriateness and functionality of the space the cabinet will take.
There are as many designs as the diversity of tastes and preferences people have in the world. For practical purposes, we will consider the following three key points to have in mind when designing one that suits you:
Choose the Shape that You Like
Closets come in three main shapes depending on the purpose that suits your fancy:
- The “L” shape: these closets have plenty of room for you to move about since they are built leaning on two of the walls in the room.
- The “U” shape: these closets are appropriate if storage is your primary consideration owing to the space created by the shelves built on three of the walls of the room.
- The straight walk-in: these closets are suitable for you if you have a roommate or partner. It creates sides that can be split between the two of you, and the partition wall helps with the separation.
Regardless of the shape, these closets ought to have places where you can sit or move about when dressing or putting on shoes.
Types of Closets to Suit Your Taste
We sometimes get bogged down with details when trying to figure out how to best decorate our spaces. We can get migraines when we think about how big our closet should be. Luckily, styles of closets come in different varieties that serve different functions, like maximizing your space, and these styles can be part of your home renovation or your consideration when moving into a new house.
The different styles are:
- Reach-In Closets
If what you need is a closet that has just enough depth to enable your clothes to hang upright to the wall at the back and also just enough shallowness for you to find clothes at the back without much hustle, then what you need is a reach-in closet. The most common reach-in closets have depths from twenty-four inches and can go up to twenty-eight inches to accommodate large items to hang like coats. Your closet may not be deep enough if you decide to design your closet with a depth of fewer than twenty-two inches.
However, you shouldn’t only consider depth as the only vital measurement in a reach-in closet; you should also consider the length of the side return walls, which are the wall sections that extend from the side walls to the door of the closet. Long return walls make the closets too deep and it will be difficult for you to reach it. For convenience, return walls ought not to be more than twelve inches.
- Walk-In Closet
Walk-in closets should be big enough to accommodate your whole body. The standard dimensions of this kind of closet are usually four feet by four feet in terms of depth and width, with a free passageway of not less than twenty-four inches between shelves.
If you do not have unusually large clothes, a closet that is four feet wide can take in hanging clothes along the back wall and one of the wall sides. A closet of about six feet is more accommodating since you can hang clothes on both sides of the wall and the back wall, while you can still get twenty-four inches of passage space at the middle of the closet.
The following are a must for these types of closets:
- Walk ways and seating areas
Closets that are more than ten feet wide are huge enough for you to furnish them with a place to seat inside or somewhere to store unsorted items. The standard size of the walkway paths should be at least twenty-four inches.
- Heights to Accommodate Hanging
You can maximize the space in the closet by using hanging rods to accommodate clothes that are hung.
Your shirts and blouses can be hung on a short-hang rod, usually placed forty-two inches above the floor of the closet. To get even more storage space you can use a double-hang series where one rod is placed higher than another, usually with heights of forty-two and eighty-four inches respectively.
Another way you can use to hang pants that aren’t folded over a hanger is by using a mid-hang rod. It is usually positioned fifty inches from the floor. You can use a long-hang rod, usually positioned sixty-eight inches above the ground, to create space for bigger items such as coats and dresses.
- Shelves
The top part of the closet is used as a shelf and it is placed eighty-four inches from the ground. Should you need to store large items, give the shelf an allowance of sixteen inches of depth. In case you want to store unusually large items, like blankets and pillows, give the shelf depth of twenty-four inches of depth.
You can always contact our architects and see if you have enough space for walk in closet.
