Closets are personal places which all of us want need and desire. Nobody escapes the hunger for more. The compulsively organized spend hours arranging, stacking, and labeling. They sleep better just knowing everything is in its proper place. Equally driven are the packrats who can't throw anything away, yet never stop collecting. It is not surprising that most home plans do not have adequate closet space for our growing needs. One of the most effective and satisfying ways to have enough closets is to modify your home plan to accommodate more closet space or to build additional closets after your home is built. With an increase of building-supply stores and home centers, materials and fittings are closer at hand. In addition, prefabricated doors, storage systems, and shelf systems make it easy for home carpenters to tackle jobs that once only professionals could handle.
Common Types of Closets
Closets can be built almost anywhere. You need not be limited by the size of your home -whether it's one room or twenty. Closets are big, or small, shallow, and/ or deep, decorative or functional. Their purpose can be to hold small items such as a broom and mop or serve as entire home offices. Closets can line the walls of a room and become, in the process, effective insulators and sound buffers. They can be built into corners, or jut out into a room to act as both a closet and room divider. Here are few of the more common home closets.
Wall-to-wall closets are the simplest to design into an existing plan because walls, floors, and ceiling provide you with ready-built supports on five sides. The size is determined by the width and height of the existing walls and ceilings. The size of the opening is determined by the rough-opening dimensions of the door plus allowance for the finish framing inside. The closet can be as deep as you want, but often times a 24-inch depth is sufficient for hanging garments.
In-corner closets are used when you cannot or do not want to enclose an entire wall with closets. Corner closet are very similar to wall-to-wall closets except there is spacing to allow a window or sitting area in between the two corners of a wall. Two in-corner closets are ideal for small rooms; the space between the compartments can be used for a bed, sofa, or desk. Often such an arrangement is the only way to have adequate storage as well as space for a necessary piece of furniture. A valance between the two closets gives a built-in look to the whole wall. The room will look less chopped-up if you use this unifying technique.
Room dividing closets are more complex than the preceding two. Instead of framing out one side, this closet requires the framing of three sides, the front, back and one end. Although this closet is not as simple, there are many advantages. Existing window or door placement may not allow for a wall-to-wall or corner closet. Plus with a room divider closet you gain not only more storage but get extra wall space and privacy. Floor plans with L-shaped rooms or lofts are prime candidates for a room-dividing closet.
Under-eave closets are used under sloping ceilings that provide little or no head room, these closets can turn wasted space into a useful storage area by boxing it in and dividing the box into shelves and drawers. This closet is perfect for bonus rooms and under stairs.
Linen closets are usually incorporated in tight spaces such as a hallway or bathroom. The small quarters means the closet needs to be well organized to get the maximum use of every square inch. As a result, the design and planning for a linen closet should not be overlooked. A common effective design has three separate sections: the most used items should be at eye level or the middle section, the top section should hold the least used things, while the bottom section should be used to store large, bulky items, such as bedding and cleaning supplies. Each section should be separately accessible.
Walk-in closets are by far the most sought after closets. Given enough space, a walk-in closet becomes not only a storage area, but a dressing room as well. Whether you use a do-it -yourself shelving and storage system or hire a closet design company, you can turn a walk-in closet into a featured room of the house. Window seats, ironing boards, folding tables, islands, and shoe racks are just a few of the features you can configure into your walk-in closet.
Storage Configurations
There are some simple features that can immediately improve the usefulness of a closet. Any closet that is at least 8 feet high can handle double clothes poles allowing you to hang two rows of short clothes. There are no rules that say all clothing must hang at the same height, nor that the hanging items cannot clear the floor by only an inch. Within the walls of the closet, your needs should dictate the arrangement of modular storage areas.
In addition to the traditional shelf-and-pole setup, you can install baskets; drawers; and tie, belt, and shoe racks. The possibilities for arranging your closets components are really endless.
There are a variety of shoe racks that can be purchased in almost any hardware, department, or home-fixture store. Most are made to hang from walls or the inside of doors where contents can be easily seen and found. There are also shoe holders or shelves that departmentalize each pair.
Lighting Considerations
No matter what the inside of your closet looks like, it should be well litghted. A light is almost a necessity in any closet big enough to enter, as well as or any closet that is deep enough to remain in partial darkness even with its door open. Normally a regular 75-watt bulb is all that is needed for adequate lighting.
The positioning of the lighting is also important. Its purpose is to illuminate the contents of the enclosure. Therefore, do not tuck it high up on the ceiling at the back of a wide shelf that shields it from most of the room. The light should be placed on the ceiling, well forward of the shelf edges. If that is not possible, it can be mounted on the front of, or even under, the top shelf. The best place for the switch is on the outside wall of the closet.
Decorative Treatments
Whether or not the interior of a closet is decorative may not be terribly important to the life-style of the family that uses it. But the exterior should blend with the décor of the room where it is located. That means the top of the closet's outside walls may require comparable crown or molding that matches the rest of the room. There should also be a baseboard decorated the same way. The closet door may also require comparable treatment.
The hardware, too, should be taken into consideration. The hinges and knobs, even the catches, should be chosen with an eye towards how they will fit in with the rest of the room.
Closet Design Tips
Here are some important tips for closet design:
All of these possibilities and many more exist and must be carefully studied when approaching closet design. There are situations and variations that are beyond the scope of this article; however, considering each of the ideas shown here whenever you set to design your new homes closets will ensure to cover the basics. Combine various functions and features to solve that difficult closet problem that exists in your new home.