More Closet-Less Floor
I often hear folks ask me to design LOTS of closet space into their new home design. If I have a master walk-in closet with 6 feet of hanging space per spouse, that means either a double-sided , 6 foot long closet OR a 12 foot long , single-sided closet. Many folks today want more than 6 feet of space per spouse. Today’s Generation “Y” home buyers are not overly possession orientated EXCEPT when it comes to owning lots of clothes. Home designers who want to really succeed in building for this new generation ,would be well advised to plan closet space for twice as much clothes as they have been commonly putting into their normal home designs.
The problem with putting in , say 12 to 16 feet, of hanging space per spouse, is that this uses up twice the amount of floorspace on a normal , existing home design. You may not realize this, but home designers sweat bullets whenever it comes to adding even one square foot of extra space to their home designs. All subcontractors, use the home’s total square footage to calculate how much each phase of the job will cost. An example of cost would be that a single-sided , 12 foot long closet (today’s normal, for a couple) has about 50 sqare foot of floorspace. Making this 4 foot wide , single-sided , closet into a 7 foot wide, double-sided closet adds an additional 36 square feet of space to the home. This would result in (if the builder was calculating , say $75 per square foot) costing the end buyer (that’s you) about $2,700 . Depending how elaborate you get with closet organizers, this cost could be a bit high or very low.
If you consider that there are several other closets in secondary bedrooms and if you wished to increase those as well, you can see how the costs and square footages would get out of hand quite quickly. The many national surveys done for the Generation “Y” home buyer profile clearly says that this buyer wants a smaller m ore compact home. To get more closet space yet have a smaller home, means you either decide to increase the closet square footages OR…you could think “outside the box” and get another unexpected answer.
Instead of making a closet bigger with more floor space, what if we were to make a much bigger closet, perhaps TWICE AS MUCH CLOSET space foWITHOUT needing to increase the square footage ONE extra square foot? A while back, when I was delving into what I call my “Little-Big House” design (see photos of the Parade 2009 on our Home Page), I approached this very subject of making a a closet bigger but not adding square footage to do it. Here’s what I came up with.
I started by imagining what is actually in our every-day closets. What I realized is that about half of what we have in our closets is considered out- of- season clothes. In Summer, few people would take their winter clothes out of the closet into the basement. In Winter, our Summer clothes is likewise taking up room in the closet but not being used. NO, I am not recommending we start taking half of our clothes out of the closet depending on the season. We could, but the best in home design should not require we trade our living patterns to fit a home design. Just the opposite, good home design should always fit our living style.
The answer is to build up, not out. I am talking about building a tall ceiling in your closet and utilize the attic space that is currently just doing nothing right over our heads. If your closet was 12 feet high instead of 8 feet high, all of your seasonal clothes could be hanged up high and your usable seasonal clothes would be hung at normal level. If you do build this story-and-a-half closet, you effectively double your hanging space. In order to hang this clothes up high, you can utilize the same method they use in department stores, when they have a wall of clothes on display. The clerk uses a tall metal hook/rod device that enables them to easily reach any high clothes hanger.
I hope the next time you think of adding square footage to create a bigger closet, this “Wild Idea” of mine will save you money and square footage! Look at the photos of this in that Home Page photo gallery. When you see these photos, also notice another bonus idea. We have a clothes chute door that is in this closet. You can pass the dirty clothes through the wall into a laundry room on the other side of the wall. How’s that for easy living?!
Thanks for reading the blog and, as always, please feel free to give me your comments or questions.
Blessings,
Tom Hignite
