Closet Remodels: Think Like a New Yorker

In New York City, where a family condo can easily garner a $1.5 million price tag, flat square-footage measurements aren’t always the final word on livable space. Some buyers here would rather know a home’s cubic square footage. Where elbow room is at a premium—and, boy, is it ever—they simply can’t afford to waste vertical space. So, they think outside the box. You might even say they’ve mastered the art of using the whole box:

Closests for Space
Can you find the two beds in this studio?
Photo credit: Porterfanna.com

Back in Wisconsin, where $1.5 million will get you a lot more than enough space to do a jumping jack and own a soaker tub, we can still take a lesson from the uber-urbanites of Gotham. And one place most useful to do that is in our closets. (No offense, New Yorkers, but some of you would feel like Maria Von Trapp singing the hills are alive atop the Alps if you stepped foot in a walk-in closet here.)

Start thinking like a New Yorker, and you’ll soon realize your closets are significantly bigger than their square footage implies. That’s because most closet designs—if you can call a plain, boxy room with some shelves and rods a design—really waste precious vertical space. The fix is customization. You can get better functionality and more bang for your buck if you move to a cubic-square-footage mindset and build a closet around your needs. This means exploiting the vertical space by adding things like built-ins, embedded storage, and pull-down mirrors.

It’s not just people in high-density cities who’ve figured out how to get big yields out of small spaces. Micro-homes like this 480-square-foot one are growing in popularity, too. They’re an equally good lesson in recognizing that a room’s space isn’t always as small as its footprint.

Brunsell staffs closet specialists who custom-design dream closet systems to fit particular lifestyles and budgets. With specialty software, they create 3D designs and show people how to give their closets the Manhattan-studio-apartment makeover. We can help you get a closet that feels bigger, holds more, and is more organized because it’s rooted in the cubic-square-footage mindset you need!