How to Design Bedroom Closets

Everyone dreams of a well-organized closet. Unfortunately, many of the closets we find in homes are not made to hold all of your items. You are lucky if you get a closet that has more then just a rod and a top shelf. It does not take much to design a closet that is well organized and takes advantage of all the space in it. Many local home improvement stores will have everything you need to design the perfect bedroom closet for your needs.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Measuring tape
• Pencil
• Paper
• Ruler
• Architectural scale (not necessary but helpful)
• Colored paper
• Ladder (if you have a very tall space)

What Are Your Needs

1. The first step in designing the bedroom closet is trying to figure out what your needs are.

2. Take an inventory of all the items you will want to put into your closet.

3. Separate items into different categories such as shoes, hanging shirts, jackets, folded shirts, pants, dresses and so on.

Measure Your Existing Closet

4. Measure each wall of your existing closet with your measuring tape. It would be good to have some assistance with this so you can get an accurate measurement.

5. Measure the height of each wall.

6. Draw simple elevations of each wall with all the measurements you have taken on your paper to a certain scale using your architectural scale or your ruler. Make sure that each wall elevation is drawn at the same scale.

Designing The Closet

7. Now that you have your measurements and the approximate sizes of each of your categories you can start designing your closet.

8. First you will want to roughly block out the different categories for your items into approximate sizes. A nice way to do this is to draw boxes for the overall sizes of each category and cut them out on the colored paper. Make sure you draw them to the same scale you used for drawing the wall elevations of your closet.

9. Then you will want to lay them out on the elevations and try to organize them on the different walls of your closet based on use.

10. Organize the hardly used or seasonal items on the very top areas of the closet.

11. Once you have them laid out so that you have a place for everything, you are ready to start building your newly designed bedroom closet.

Tips & Warnings

• Visit your local home improvement store and see if they sell closet organizers. Pick up a catalog of what they have to offer so you can see what the standard sizes are when you are trying to design your bedroom closet. Once you have laid out your design, bring it into your local home improvement store or local organization store and show them what your needs are. This will allow you to get rough estimates on the different closet organization systems available in your area. Many times you can buy most of the supplies to build your own custom closet organizer from your local home improvement store at a fraction of the cost if you are handy with building things. You can buy bins or drawer systems for your closet to help you organize smaller items.
• Do not place heavy items on the top shelves of your closet; this can be very dangerous. Do not try to measure tall spaces on your own especially if you are using a ladder.