Need More Closet Space? 6 Chic Interior Design Solutions

In the series How to Live With a Room You Hate, we ask design pros to solve everyday interior problems.

A ROOM with little or no closet space can leave you feeling bulldozed by your own belongings. “It’s unsettling when nothing has a home. Creating a system that maximizes your space can change your whole mood,” said Jamie Garson of Better Than B4, a custom organizing service in Manhattan. Here, six stuff-stowing techniques that offer relief when a bedroom is bereft of storage.

1. Increase Your Screen Time

When Gavin Smith, an architect with Perkins + Will, turned an attic space in his 1910 Craftsman home in Seattle into a bedroom for himself and his wife, he wanted to leave the space open and airy. So rather than building a traditional closet, he constructed cabinetry and clothing racks under the cathedral ceiling and shielded them behind a peek-a-boo screen of cedar slats supported by chic, blackened steel. “A solid drywall would be perceived very differently,” he said. “Because the screen is see-through, it creates a sense of depth.” Smith gave the partition—which also serves as a place to hang a flat-screen TV—a walnut stain to match a nearby dresser. If you want to skip construction, suggests Garson, tuck belongings behind a standing room divider.

2. Play Dress-Up

Interior designer Emilie Jacob gave a closet-less child’s bedroom in Dubai a clever theatrical fix by installing rods to hang clothing, many at a low level, and suspending drapes that, with a pull, can hide them on a whim. The drapes delineate a dressing area that lets the little girl don her duds in privacy. The curtains begin where a modular IKEA bed with underbed storage and attached wardrobe leaves off. “The linen curtains are really light, and there are no cords,” said Jacob, who founded local design firm Stella + the Stars and collaborated with Studio Tsubi, also in Dubai, on the room. “Any child can pull them open or closed.”

3. Broker a Separate Piece

When bad luck or circumstance has robbed you of a closet, a free-standing wardrobe makes for a classic solution. One with many benefits, contends Russell Pinch, the owner of Pinch, a furniture and lighting design firm in London. “It’s an investment…but one you can take with you.”

Freestanding wardrobes can solve the storage dilemma – and you can take them with you when you leave. Credit: Getty Images

And importing a wardrobe rather than constructing storage can be kinder to architecturally valuable spaces, like the bedroom in Pinch’s vacation home in Charente-Maritime, France, in an 18th-century structure that was originally a cow barn. “We wanted to preserve the….beautiful parquet floors and timbered ceilings,” he said. “A built-in would have dominated the architecture and reduced the size of the room.” The white wardrobe, which he designed, “is an elegant solution. It looks like plaster-relief work,” said Pinch. Next to the wardrobe a full-length mirror with drawers at the bottom offers additional storage and helps complete a dressing area.

4. Get a Side Hustle

In a London townhouse, local interior designer Andrea Benedettini fit a full-size bed into a relatively narrow room, and rather than flank it with nightstands used the tight space on either side to build matching full-height closets. Unwilling to forgo the benefits of traditional bedside tables, he hung sconces on the sides of the closets facing the bed and carved out niches (complete with concealed lighting) to create a ledge for a book, phone or water glass. “Simple design details like the niche elevate the design,” Benedettini said. “Applying a fabric to the closet door and bespoke bronze hardware helped create a calming and luxurious space.” A ceiling-height upholstered headboard bridges the closets, connecting them visually into a whole, so the bed appears to be tucked into its own soft alcove.

5. Let It Rock

According to organiser Garson, much of our wardrobes can live outside a closet quite nicely. She suggests openly displaying an amazing sneaker collection in a media unit, placing funky handbags on floating shelves or arranging hooks on a wall for an artful pattern of hats or scarves.

6. Let It Roll

For a bedroom with no closet, Hilary Matt lets it all hang out with a rolling rack for clothes. The trick to exhibiting your wardrobe (warning: this is not for slobs)? “Keep the [rest of the] décor clean and monochromatic so the room doesn’t feel cluttered,” said the Manhattan interior designer.

Open clothes racks can work well as long as they are kept tidy. Credit: Getty Images

The pop of colour from the apparel, which needs to be well-organized, adds to the room’s scheme “like a piece of art,” she said. Organiser Garson favours racks that match the style of the room, whether made of a fun acrylic or the more-masculine matte black metal.

For decades, Australia has leaned into its reputation as the lucky country. But luck, as it turns out, is not an economic strategy.

What once looked like resilience now appears increasingly fragile. Beneath the surface of rising property values and steady headline growth, the Australian economy is showing signs of strain that can no longer be ignored.

Recent data paints a sobering picture. Australia has recorded one of the largest declines in real household disposable income per capita among advanced economies.

Wages have failed to keep pace with inflation, meaning many Australians are working harder for less. On a per capita basis, income growth has stalled and, at times, reversed.

And yet, on paper, things still look relatively solid. GDP is growing. Unemployment remains low. But that growth is increasingly being driven by population expansion rather than productivity.

More people are contributing to output, but not necessarily improving living standards.

That distinction matters.

For years, Australia’s economic success rested on a powerful combination: a once-in-a-generation mining boom, a credit-fuelled housing market, strong migration and a property sector that rarely faltered. Between 1991 and 2020, the country avoided recession entirely, building enormous wealth in the process.

But much of that wealth is tied to property. Around two-thirds of household wealth sits in real estate, inflated by leverage and sustained by demand. It has worked, until now.

The problem is the supply side of the economy has not kept up.

Housing supply is falling behind population growth. Rental vacancies are near record lows.

Construction firms are collapsing at an elevated rate. At the same time, massive infrastructure pipelines are competing with residential projects for labour and materials, pushing costs higher and delaying delivery.

The result is a system under pressure from all angles.

Despite near full employment, productivity growth has stagnated for years. In simple terms, Australians are putting in more hours without generating more output per hour. The economy is running faster, butgoing nowhere.

Meanwhile, government spending continues to expand. Public debt is approaching $1 trillion, with spending now accounting for a record share of GDP.

The gap between spending and revenue has been filled by borrowing for decades, adding further pressure to an already stretched system.

This is where the uncomfortable question emerges.

Has Australia become too reliant on a model driven by rising property values, expanding credit and population growth?

As asset prices rise, households feel wealthier and borrow more. Banks lend more. Governments collect more revenue. Migration fuels demand. The cycle reinforces itself.

But when productivity stalls and debt outpaces real income, the system begins to depend on constant expansion just to stay stable.

It is not a collapse scenario. But it is not particularly stable either.

Nowhere is this more evident than in housing.

The National Housing Accord targets 1.2 million new homes over five years, yet current completion rates are well below that pace. With approvals falling and construction costs rising, the gap between supply and demand is widening, not narrowing.

Housing is also one of the largest contributors to inflation, with costs rising sharply across rents, construction and utilities. Yet the private sector, from small investors to major developers, is struggling to make projects stack up in the current environment.

This brings the policy debate into sharper focus.

Tax settings such as negative gearing and capital gains concessions have undoubtedly boosted demand over the past two decades. But they have also supported supply. Removing them may ease prices briefly, but risks deepening the supply shortage over time.

That is the paradox.

Policies designed to make housing more affordable can, in practice, make the shortage worse if they discourage development. The optics may appeal, but the economics are far less forgiving.

It is also worth remembering that most property investors are not institutional players. The majority own just one investment property. They are, in many cases, ordinary Australians using real estate as their primary wealth-building tool.

Undermining that system without replacing it with a viable alternative risks unintended consequences, from reduced supply to higher rents and increased inflation.

So where does that leave Australia?

At a crossroads.

The country can continue to rely on population growth and rising asset prices to drive economic activity. Or it can shift towards a model built on productivity, innovation and sustainable growth.

The latter is harder. It requires structural reform, long-term thinking and political discipline.

But it is also the only path that leads to genuine, lasting prosperity.

The question is no longer whether Australia has been lucky.

It is whether it can evolve before that luck runs out.

Paul Miron is the Co-Founder & Fund Manager of Msquared Capital.