How are Closets different than the rest of your house?   When building a home, engineers are called to calculate the structural needs and specifications of the building.  Architects will design the overall shape of the structure, will decide where to locate the living areas, the eating areas, the sleeping areas, with relationship to the phisical properties of the lot and the needs of the client.  Interior designers will give advice on color schemes, fabrics, furniture selections. Kitchen and Bathroom designers will be best qualified for helping customers with decisions about these areas.  How about Closets?  Should your architect be in charge of deciding how to lay them out?  Or should your Kitchen/ Bathroom specialist be the one? Your interior designer?  Your cabinet maker?  The answer is, any of them might be able to come up with good solutions, but the fact  is, they do not spend all their time designing closets, and therefore, they might not be aware of certain important design rules that make closets different from Kitchens, Bathrooms, Living Rooms and others.

A designer that specializes in Closet Design and Storage Solutions will be your best resource for the project.  Some closets are so standard, that 10 different designers will come up with the same solution for it.  No variation. Just one solution for that one space.  Other closets, those that are as big as your kitchen or bedroom, with a window on one wall, a door on another, a space heater here, and an access panel somewhere else… those closets will be more “picky” and will demand something different than your standard shaped closet would.  Is your closet square?  Is it rectangular?  Is there an angle that creates a funnel somewhere?   How many people will be in the closet at one time, sharing the space, and fighting for freedom of movement to get dressed?  All these are questions that a good designer will pay attention to. 
When closet companies advertise that they are different than the competition because they “pay attention” to the customer’s needs, I wonder: Who do they pay attention to?  Because we really have 2 customers and both have to be listened to with the same degree of attention.  Our goal is to listen to the space first, discover what “IT” wants from us, lay out a plan that respects its needs and wishes and make the fruit of this “conversation” available to the real customer so that we can start a dialog between the 2, trying to fit the needs and wishes of the one with he needs and wishes of the other.  The end product will only be good if both customers are “happy”.  And a good design will achieve just that!  

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