I am not a fan of walk in robes, unless of course you have a massive bedroom/suite and can really go to town on the layout, providing a pouf to sit on in your grand dressing room style space. Otherwise, they always look over-filled and very untidy with bags, belts, scarves thrown everywhere and shoes multi-stacked on the floor. In my experience, they just become dumping grounds for clothes rather than an effective and well presented storage unit.

Give me a well built wardrobe with soft close hinged doors any day! You get maximum storage and can design with open shelves (perfect for bags and jumpers) and closed drawers (perfect for ties, scarves, under garments, PJs). If your wall area is big enough (like the bedroom I'm about to do at 3.6m wide), you can create double hanging rails, open shelves, drawers, shoe racks, the lot! and add some nice feature doors in either vinyl wrap gloss or timber with a nice panel that gives the doors a classic finish. Too easy.

I LOATHE sliding doors as you can't open two doors at once and are forever reaching in to find the one top that's just around the corner. They are also noisy to open and eventually need repair.

Hope that's a help.

By the way, minimum space for walk in is 1.5m deep (or 5ft) .... 90cm for walk in / walk through space and 60cm for hang space with shelving above. If going for this option, and you;re of average/tall height, consider raising the rail and shelf so that you can fit a second hanging rail in at the short end of the robe. It also means you can tuck in a dresser for extra storage and shirts will still sit comfortably above.

You lose a lot of space in the 9x4 feet in the middle where you can't hang anything. I'm not sure I'd go that deep unless you're subdividing with a central wall or something. A closet that long will be pretty great with just a reach-in setup; you can still get a full closet system to get you a mix of single and double rods, shelves, etc. I'd rather get extra rod length that way than by sacrificing such a huge piece of real estate.

I'm thinking of adding a closet to my my sitting room and because of window placement we will be only able to be slightly larger than 4'wide but 11' long. Will that even work as a walk in

thanks

The minimum space you need depth wise is 4 feet. That's 2 feet for the clothes to hang and 2 feet for you to walk past them. If you're going to put hanging clothes on both opposite sides of the closet, you need 6 feet. If you want to have an island in the closet, you need a minimum of 10' x 10'. Working with a closet professional can help you avoid some of the pitfalls. If there's a Closet Factory in your area, ask for a designer to help you based on your "inventory" of personal items.

Thank you

We plan to have long closet with one side clothes to hang, so only 4' wide and 18' long.

I have a 16 feet by 13 feet bedroom, would love a walk in closet or some kind of organizer.i do not like wardrobes.can I do one with my room?thank u advance

Great advice. I'm going with 51" depth, the entire length of my room.

Minimum width is 6' for clothes on both sides if you're not putting in builtins. 6.5' minimum with. 7' is ideal.

I have seen 5x5' closets, but they only have clothes on one wall and are completely stupid. The door swing means that you can get 3' of shelves and 4' of unobstructed hanging space out of them (another 1' obstructed by the shelves), max.

For length, less than 3' is utterly pointless. In fact, a 6'x3' walk in closet has the same room as a 2x6' reach in.

6x5, with a door on the 6' wall, is then the minimum that makes any sense.

27" width framed isn't needed for jackets. Wall framing means that a closet framed to 2' actually does have 27" when the door is shut. You just can't count on those inches as part of the 24".

Looking for suggestions...we have a 54" deep by 10' wide space to use for a bedroom closet in a rental house. The house doesn't have a lot of storage so we want to make best use of the space. We also want to appeal to renters. This is a 2bed/2bath rental house in a college area.

1. First idea is to do a reach-in, extra-deep closet, maybe 40-42" deep x 10' wide. This would use up less of the room's floor space for the closet, but would require that wall to be mostly sliding closet doors. We could put 16" depth of shelving behind 24" of hanger bar space. The back shelving would be "deep storage"...has anyone else tried this before? Does it work?

2. Second idea is a walk-in closet, but with only 50" width (54" depth - 4" for wall) it could have only one side as storage and the rest walking space. With a pocket door this would preserve the most wall space in the room for furniture. Or maybe the walk in is just 6' of the 10' width, and then a reach-in or open space for the rest?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. I will attach a drawing of the room to give you an idea of the space.

Here is the drawing of the current room with the space for closet marked

Just met with our architect and he talked me into going a full 5" depth for a walk in the full length of our room. We're adding pocket doors on each end so my hubby can have one half and I can have the other. When I asked for 51" he told me I'd be happier with a full five feet. I could get away with less but my hubby and his big shoulders might not be too happy trying to negotiate the smaller passageway.

Useful thread. We have been toying with idea of changing a box room into a dressing room/walk in closet. I thought it might be too small but it is 7 foot wide by 9.5 foot deep. Sounds like that would be ok to have hanging space down both sides?

I could gain an extra foot of width but it would mean taking out a wall. Presumably that wouldn't be worth it for the extra foot?

It sounds like you could certainly have hanging down both sides. I think it would still be a closet as opposed to a dressing room, however, in the sense that you probably wouldn't want to be in there other than to find things if you did hang it on all sides. The additional foot of width probably wouldn't change that.

Hmm so might be better to have hanging on the back wall and one side only and maybe have something narrow like shoe storage on the other wall. That would give back a few inches. Food for thought.

Guyuguuuuuuuuu Hugh have H

I would love to have a reach-in closet that runs the width of my bedroom. I would also like to have barn doors. Would 12’ x 3’ possibly work?

For a small walk-in closet, the minimum space required typically depends on your needs, but generally, it should be at least 25 to 30 square feet to comfortably accommodate shelving, hanging rods, and space for movement.

I found that JustAnswer was incredibly helpful when I needed advice on optimizing my room space. Their experts provided practical solutions that suited my budget and space constraints perfectly.