Built In Storage Ideas for Small Homes

Small houses are not short of space so much as short of used space. Almost every one we work in has three or four volumes doing nothing, and they are the same three or four in nearly every house. Here is where to look.

The alcoves either side of the chimney

Older houses were built when every room had a stove, so the chimney runs up through the middle and the walls step back either side of it. That leaves a recess typically three to four feet wide and about a foot deep — a width no manufacturer builds to, which is why in most houses it holds a lamp and collects dust.

Built to the opening, that recess takes a full-height run of shelving without giving up an inch of floor. Two of them in one room hold what a wall of furniture would, and the room reads bigger afterwards rather than fuller.

One warning: before anything gets fixed to a chimney breast, find out what the flue is still doing. Plenty of these chimneys still serve a furnace or water heater even when nothing is visible in the room.

Under the stairs

This is the biggest single unused volume in a typical house, and it is usually either a sealed void or a cupboard with a door too small to use it properly.

Drawers are the best answer, because they bring the contents out to you instead of making you crawl into a space that tapers. Deep drawers at the tall end, a cupboard in the middle, low storage for shoes at the short end. It is fiddly work — every drawer is a different height following the stair line — which is why it is rarely done and why it changes a small house more than anything else of the same cost.

The band above every door

Every room has a strip of wall above door height that runs the whole way round and holds nothing. In a house with decent ceilings that is a foot or more of continuous wall, at a level that costs no floor space and blocks no light.

A shelf run at that height takes the seasonal and rarely-used things out of the cupboards you actually need. It suits light, boxed items — and it wants a front edge or lip and proper fixing into framing, because something falling from head height is a different event from something sliding off a low shelf.

Under the windows

In an enclosed porch or a converted back room the windows often start low, leaving a band of wall two or three feet high running the length of the room. Furniture against it blocks the glass; leaving it empty wastes the best wall in the room.

A window seat with storage underneath uses it exactly — seating in a room usually short of it, drawers or lift-up boxes below, and everything kept under sill height so the room stays light.

The closet you already have

Before building anything new, look inside the closets. Most have a single rod at shirt height with one shelf above, which leaves about a metre of dead air under everything hanging and another unused band above the shelf.

Splitting part of that run into two stacked rods roughly doubles the hanging capacity of that section, and running the top shelf right to the ceiling adds storage for the things you touch twice a year. It is measured in hours, not days, and it is the cheapest storage improvement in the house.

One thing people get wrong: almost everyone plans for more full-length hanging space than they use. Count what genuinely needs the full drop — it is usually a handful of items.

Two things that decide whether it works

Depth. Shallower beats deeper nearly always. Books need eleven or twelve inches, and a deep shelf holds more in theory and less in practice because you never see the back row again.

Span. A sagging shelf is a maths problem, not a materials one. Over about four feet, three-quarter-inch material will bow under books within a year. Shorten the span with a centre support, add a solid front edge to stiffen the board, or use thicker stock.

Fitted or free-standing

Free-standing is cheaper and it moves with you. Built-in wins on fit and on the space it recovers — a bought bookcase wastes the gap behind it, the gap above it, and the corners at each side, and in a small house those inches add up to real storage.

The built-ins page covers fitted casework that reads as part of the house; shelving and storage covers the utility end — closets, garages, and open shelving built to the wall you actually have.