Our Bedroom Makeover: How We Added a Small Space Closet

Now that our bedroom makeover has been totally revealed (more on that here), it’s time to discuss our closet! When I bought the house, there wasn’t a single closet in the entire place, so that first year was all about getting creative. There are so many amazing options out there for creating a closet out of nothing — and, believe me, I evaluated them ALL before proceeding. Let’s dig in and discuss some serious organization and all of the details of our small space closet!

Our Bedroom Makeover: How We Added a Small Space Closet

To refresh your memory, this is what it looked like before. Not exactly functional, especially these photos were taken before Sean even moved in!

After a lot of research about materials and finishes, I decided to go with elfa from The Container Store (they were also having a sale, which helped a lot). I wanted everything on the wall to blend in as much as possible, so I selected the white decor collection. To start, I measured the entire wall and used the building tool on The Container Store site to fill out the details. It was actually really fun to drag and drop until the space felt right! Then I Photoshopped in the dresser I was considering to make sure everything would fit — especially because I wanted a tall, empty space next to the dresser for a laundry basket and hanging space for longer clothing.

With elfa, you can get as tricky and compartmentalized as you want. I decided to make my closet a bit more flexible so that we can adjust in the future. Instead of committing to drawers and built-in baskets, I opted for bins and baskets. As we learn more about our storage needs, we can always add more!

Sean and I each have a shelf for accessories and one for shoes. And we keep extra sheets in those bins at the top. I especially love the hooks in the right side of the shelves. They’ve been great for hanging up Sean’s hoodies.

I also really wanted a normal dresser… even though the room is tiny, that felt really important to me. I must have looked at over 100 white lowboy dressers before selecting the Clara extra-wide dresser from Pottery Barn. Everything about this dresser was perfect for my space: the dimensions, the straightforward contemporary design, and the construction. This home has been all about making decisions based on quality and lasting power, so it was important to me to choose a dresser that is well-constructed. Clara is made of solid poplar with dovetail joinery and even has drawer glides to ensure easy opening and closing. I felt especially fancy when I opened the top drawers and they were lined in soft fabric.

In terms of organizing clothing, I followed a few rules that I’ve shared here before:

save space for longer items to hang (to the left of the dresser).
use these slim velvet hangers to optimize hanging space.
organize hanging clothes by item: group pants together, group shirts together, etc.
after the clothes are grouped by kind, organize by color: group white shirts with white shirts, grey with grey, etc.
store large purses together in a large bin.
store small accessories together in small baskets.
organize shoes in clear boxes.
bins on the top shelf are for storing out of season clothing and bedding.

Then, to cover the closet we used luxurious white linen custom curtains from Barn & Willow. While the room was down to studs, we had the option of moving the doorway over to accommodate actual closet doors, but given the cost of doing that, it just wasn’t worth it. To do so, we’d need to re-drywall and repaint the dining room wall (aka the blue wall), reframe the doorway, and fix the wood floors… yup, not worth it because this is my investment house! Custom curtains where the perfect solution. Not only do they make the room feel romantic and textural, but they help to conceal the entire closet so easily. Finding the right curtain hardware was tough, but (of course) Rejuvenation had exactly what I was looking for!

If you’re tight on closet space, I highly recommend going this route!