7 Tips for architecturally sympathetic storage
Installing a tall cabinet in a small room can feel like someone has parked a double decker bus too closely in your personal space. Oversized built-in wardrobes where scale, symmetry are sacrificed for storage is designer sacrilege. The main problem is that the taller a piece of furniture is, the more it towers over everything else and the deeper it is, the further forward it steps into the room making the room feel shrunken and lopsided.
When the goal is to retain a room’s charm, new furniture must be sympathetic to the architectural proportions and shape. Minimising encroachment on the ceiling shape and decorations, the views, airflow and light from windows, focal points like chimneys and existing joinery detail are essential. The likely outcome will be a cabinet of lower height, and possibly shortened length which makes the internal storage design crucial. But for now, let’s just consider where to put cabinetry in the room.
1 Divide and Conquer
Don’t give precious floor and air space to cabinets with a lazy, one size fits all storage approach. Investigate the size of the objects to be stored and then group them according to their depth with the mindset that tall, deep cabinets are exclusively for objects that cannot fit into lower or shallower cabinets, (see Everything in Good Measure for tips on how to do this). This way, the big cabinets are corralled into a smaller footprint in the room keeping the balance between storage and aesthetics as it should be.
For example, in this bedroom, because shoes, underwear and folded clothing don’t require the 600mm depth of a wardrobe, they’re excluded from this prime real estate. Only clothes on coat hangers and suitcases get this spot.
Placing the wardrobes into the chimney recesses minimises intrusion into the room without noticeably changing the room’s shape or symmetry. Avoiding the urge to reach for the ceiling confines the wardrobes to a stature reminiscent of furniture typical of the time.
Here, the compromise between storage and style was to store “overflow hanging” in the adjoining room
2 Keep a Low Profile
Unlike the double decker bus effect of a tall cabinet, low units have minimal visual intrusion on a space yet pack a solid storage punch. This credenza accommodates all of the remaining essential weekly clothing like underwear, leisure wear, folded items and shoes. Meanwhile, it anchors the window and provides a focal point from the room’s entrance.
3 Break the Plane
Breaking the plane of cabinetry lessens the intrusion into the room. The first project (above), is an example where by splitting the cabinets to the left and right of the chimney the wardrobe outline mirrors the “W” outline of cornice detail on the ceiling. Oddly, this actually makes the room feel larger because our eye is drawn to this distant detail which accentuates the room’s proportions.
Similarly, below, by breaking the cabinetry apart to highlight the window, our eye still perceives the original room proportions despite the extreme depth of this joinery with it’s 800mm deep mattress and 900mm deep side cabinets. So instead of building wide cabinetry, this design goes deep, with bookshelves tucked in behind the display cabinets and deep drawers storage at the front. By maximising the depth, the required storage was achieved without spreading across two walls.
Photo credit: Abe Bastoli Pennant Hills Studio | Design: Sally Hart
4 It’s Hip to be Squared
In rectangular rooms, avoid narrowing the room by placing the wardrobe on the short wall so that the room becomes more square. This way the room feels balanced, as opposed to the first photo in the blog where the wardrobe was placed on the long axis which narrowed the room.
5 Take one for the Team
Builders, electricians, plumbers and air conditioning technicians need a place to conceal their services. Tall cabinets are the perfect player to step up to the plate to conceal or decoy these ugly necessities and prevent a room from having too many obstructions.
The very intrusive bulkhead below houses the air conditioning unit. It completely dominated the room in an ominous way as if just hanging over the living room before.
Although the bulkhead remains a dominant feature, building joinery beneath it has softened and greatly improved its appearance.
Photo Credit: Abe Bastoli, Pennant Hills Studio | Design: Sally Hart
6 A Warm and Wide Welcome
Even a large room feels cramped and compromised when it’s entrance is narrowed and tight.Allowing the door into the room to swing open to 45 degrees, or show about 75% of the wall opposite prevents this claustrophobic effect.
Resist the temptation of full height, length and depth cabinetry near entrances that prioritise storage over style.
This design prioritises style over storage by stopping the deep, tall wardrobe well short of the room’s entrance. The loss of potential wardrobe storage is compensated by the adjoining custom built cabinet which houses a laundry hamper and jewellery drawer to achieve the right balance between storage and style.
Photo credit: Abe Bastoli Pennant Hills Studio | Design: Sally Hart
7 Group Action
You can save space by combining furniture. The idea of putting wardrobes either side of a bed is an old one, and can feel a little too enclosed. Bringing the bed slightly forward increases storage potential for shelves and lighting behind the bed and meanwhile brings the bedhead position away from the enclosed section against the wall. Grouping the furniture this way eliminates gaps to save space and makes the room feel less cluttered than having furniture on every wall.
Again here, the hanging is concentrated in the wardrobes with the overflow in a credenza opposite.
The credenza includes an integrated laundry hamper so that the floor is clutter free. By scattering the storage around the room this design equaled the storage from the previous wall-to-wall monstrosity which completely dwarfed this bedroom.
The credenza highlights the pretty window and streetscape which was previously completely lost because the wall-to-wall wardrobe had the bed squashed up against it. Now the room is balanced and feels more spacious.
When seeking the balance between storage and an attractive room, making the room the priority by building the most aesthetically pleasing cabinet with a very efficient interior is the best approach.