Having convenient, well-organized places to store things can help make life at home feel a little more peaceful. That’s why so many architects and interior designers are almost obsessive about maximizing opportunities to eke out more storage space.
“Creating bespoke, built-in storage is one of my favorite things,” said Linette Dai, an interior designer based in Long Beach, Calif. “It allows you to live without being overwhelmed by clutter.”
Custom, built-in storage elements can be far more functional than ordinary closets, chests and armoires while also bringing more architectural interest to a space. “We’ve always thought about storage as a sort of alibi to create something beautiful,” said Robert Highsmith, a partner at the Brooklyn-based design firm Workstead. A focus on inventive storage solutions, he said, “has been integral to our work since the beginning.”
Here are some of the ways Ms. Dai, Mr. Highsmith and other professional designers do it.
Build It Into Furniture
Furniture takes up a lot of floor area, and in most cases the space beneath a seat is unused. Adding drawers or a hinged seat that provides access to the void below can create a satisfying amount of storage space.
Ms. Dai frequently adds pullout drawers to the bases of built-in banquettes and benches, like window seats with drawers for toys below them or kitchen banquettes with storage for overflow pots and pans.
“Our focus is not just about beauty and aesthetics, but really maximizing every square inch,” she said. “There’s no dead space. I just try to fit things in everywhere.”
Free-standing furniture can perform in a similar way. When the New York-based interior designer Markham Roberts was designing a house in Southampton, N.Y., and struggling with where to put covers for outdoor furniture, he created a custom upholstered sofa with a hinged seat and back so it doubled as a storage chest, which he uses at a dining table.
“We made it so the top pivots all the way forward, and the outdoor furniture covers get stored in there,” Mr. Roberts said.
Custom furniture isn’t the only option. Many furniture manufacturers make beds and sofas with integrated drawers or hinged openings.
Conceal It Within a Wall
Sometimes there is usable space behind walls, simply because a builder wasn’t focused on taking advantage of every nook and cranny. When the New York-based architect Lara Apelian renovated an apartment for one of her clients on Park Avenue in Manhattan, she found space behind a wall that led to a plumbing riser.
“That was a nice surprise during construction: We had more room in that wall cavity than we expected,” Ms. Apelian said. She used it to create a cabinet that is roughly 12 inches deep and largely hidden behind a door with concealed hinges that’s flush with the wall. “You can put a variety of things in there, like a hair dryer and tissue paper,” she said.
It’s similar to a jib door, which runs all the way to the floor but is designed without casing, so it blends into a wall. Ms. Dai once installed a jib door with wallpaper and baseboard that matched the rest of the wall to conceal a coat closet. “I wanted to make that door as discreet as possible, to minimize unnecessary lines,” she said.
Create a Storage Wall
You can also build more storage space by thickening an entire wall in a wide corridor or at one end of a room.
When renovating a carriage house in Charleston, S.C., Workstead created extensive storage by adding custom cabinets with oak-and-cane doors, which stretch wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, giving them an appearance similar to paneling.
“It’s not just a wall of flat cabinets,” Mr. Highsmith said. “We wanted to create a material moment while adding as much utility as possible.”
The firm followed a similar approach when renovating a house on Shelter Island, N.Y., installing cabinetry and window seats with hinged tops that ran the length of a long corridor leading to the bedrooms.
“The bedrooms didn’t have much storage, so we created a whole wall of storage that also encompasses the windows,” said Ryan Mahoney, a partner at Workstead. The cabinets and chests keep extra sheets, blankets and pillows out of the bedrooms, but within easy reach.
The designers at Bergman Vass, an interior design firm based in Gladwyne, Pa., have used a similar approach in bedrooms by building storage walls where tall cabinets step down to integrated night stands on either side of a bed.
“Building millwork closets rather than drywall closets not only saves on space, but also adds a lot more character,” said Dana Bergman Falcione, the principal of the firm, adding that these built-in units pack a surprising amount of storage into just a few square feet.
Make the Most of Awkward Corners
Spaces where circulation is limited, like tight niches and beneath angled ceilings, are also great places to add storage.
When the designers at Bergman Vass made a bed-sized window seat under angled ceilings in a home in Longport, N.J., they added small storage cabinets on both sides. On an adjacent wall, they created a hatch-sized opening to provide access to what would have been a tiny attic space, transforming it into a crawl-friendly play area for children.
In another upstairs room that needed to function as a combination sitting room, home office and painting studio, they added built-in shelving and drawers under the most steeply sloped portions of the ceiling, where it would have been difficult to walk.
“Those are spaces to display books and store accessories,” said Erica Vassalotti, a creative partner at the firm. “They enhance the architecture rather than detracting from it.”
Similarly, the tight spaces left around radiators and air-conditioning units is often unusable for furniture but can be reclaimed as storage space. Ms. Apelian, for one, has designed covers for heating and cooling equipment that extend across a whole wall with additional cabinets and shelves.
Put It Under the Stairs
The cramped area beneath a staircase sometimes can become significant storage space.
When Mr. Roberts renovated the carriage house at his property in Clinton, N.Y., to use it as a studio, he added a pine-paneled staircase lined with storage closets that visually blend into the rest of the room.
“Those doors under the stairs hide the printer and all sorts of files and samples,” Mr. Roberts said. He reserved one area as a general dumping ground for all manner of clutter, for when he needs to clean up in a hurry. “There’s always a need for that,” he said.
Workstead has designed a couple of compact kitchens that use under-stair storage to reduce the need for banks of cabinetry that sit out from the wall.
“Japanese tansu stairs have always been really fascinating to us,” Mr. Highsmith said, describing storage chests with integrated steps that have been made for centuries. “A staircase is a great place to celebrate not only the function of the stair, but how much we can really fit underneath it.”
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