Saturday, March 13, 2010

Essential Facts About Closet Designs

by Jeffrey Alley

Good closet designs are a luxury that anyone can afford. One need not have a large walk-in closet to keep clothes and footwear safe, clean and organized, and even the smallest closet space can be made more efficient by the addition of a few components to better utilize the limited space.

Clothes and footwear will definitely last longer and look better when worn if stored in a clean and efficient space. On the other hand, closet chaos makes it hard to find clothes, often needlessly wrinkles previously ironed garments, and allows dust and debris build up that can soil or stain stored clothing. When a couple shares a single closet, a good design that gives a separate space to each can ensure domestic tranquillity, at least as far as the closet is concerned. A good walk in closet design can make the any room look brilliant and this guide will help you to learn how to design a closet.

Think Submarines

There are many closet design ideas out there, so you’ll have to choose which ones you like. You won’t need to hire a closet designer, if you can do your own research. The key in designing a good closet arrangement is to think like a submarine designer. Each square inch is valuable space, and the best designs manage to squeeze a lot of usability into a small area. Measuring the dimensions of one’s closet and producing a rough layout sketch is easy enough that anyone can do it. Experimenting with several sketches will help the designer come up with a plan that fits their needs.

closet-designsCloset Components

Closet furnishings do not need to be built by a professional carpenter. Modern closet furnishing components are widely available and components can be mixed and matched to fit any situation. Mounting usually involves simple attachment systems that even a beginner can easily master. Many systems now use drawers and shelving made from metal gridwork, as this allows users to easily see the stored clothing items. These lightweight components are also relatively inexpensive and particularly easy to mount. Most component systems are also adjustable, so components can easily be installed at different times and future re-arrangement is accomplished without much bother.

Shoes

Although women may have more fancy shoes that require safe storage, even a lumberjack is likely to have a lot of shoes. Women’s delicate shoes can benefit greatly by being stored in such a way as to not mix and jumble with other shoes. Keeping shoes in their original boxes is one solution, but those boxes can take up a lot of space. Modern shoe compartments come in a variety of sizes that accommodate everything from small sandals to large boots. Some vertical shoe storage systems manage to hold a surprising number of shoes in a small space.

Folded Shirts and Sweaters

Many closet systems include a significant amount of drawers for storing folded shirts, sweaters and underwear items that were once only stored in furniture chests in the bedroom. In this way a well designed closet can make bedroom chests un-necessary and free up floor space in the room. Drawers are generally more efficient storage receptacles than shelves, as clothing stored on shelves can be difficult to extract from a stacked pile. A block of low profile drawers will hold many garments without cumbersome stacking and squashing.

Hanging Poles

Almost any closet should obviously include space for garments to be hung on hangars. Long garments like gowns and coats probably require a full height pole, but in the cases where many shirts and blouses are hung, a double pole arrangement can be a good use of space.

Whereas conventional closets have a long single pole on which clothes can be hung, more efficient designs often employ several poles, sometimes one on top of the other and sometimes running only for a portion of the closet width.

Hooks and Cedar

One of the best walk in closet designs idea is to include ample hooks clothing items that have already been worn once, but are clean enough to be worn again. Including ample space and hooks for holding these previously worn garments is an excellent practice.

Having some aromatic wood like cedar present in a closet not only repels most moths that might lay eggs on stored clothing, but also maintains a fresh fragrance that benefits the stored clothing. Mothballs may work well, but they definitely add a disagreeable odor to stored clothing. Cedar can be used to line drawers, walls, or shelves or even just placed as pieces in the nooks and crannies of a closet.

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