Fashion editors love to joke that they have mountains of clothing all over their apartment. It's actually always part of the fashion-month small talk in between shows. Everyone is complimenting each other's street style–ready outfits, and then they'll mention how much of a clothing hurricane was left in their wake on the way out the door. My personal clothing mountain wasn't necessarily seasonal. Instead, it was around all year long.
My boyfriend and I decided we needed a larger apartment around two years ago because we wanted more space and liked the idea of being able to host more friends. But we also realized we needed a solution for all of my clothing, which was starting to surround us. Our new apartment had two bedrooms, and the plan was to convert the smaller one into a walk-in closet so that there would be no more monstrous piles of shoes, bags, and skirts everywhere you look.
For some reason, the idea of creating a walk-in closet overwhelmed me. I bought a bunch of clothing racks in the meantime and profusely apologized when anyone saw the room. "I swear it's going to be a fun walk-in closet at some point," I'd say over and over and over again. It wasn't until earlier this year that I decided I really needed to make my "13 Going on 30 walk-in closet" dreams come true.
A before image of my closet. It's certainly not pretty and it's certainly not organized.
Part of the hang-up was that walk-in closets are expensive, and I didn't want to spend a fortune. Of course, I still wanted it to look nice! I searched high and low for a solution that felt well within my budget, was easy to customize, and, of course, reminded me of something Jenna Rink or Carrie Bradshaw would approve of.
When my mom suggested we look at IKEA, I was hesitant. I'm a bit of a vintage-furniture snob, and I love to try to find as many pieces for my apartment secondhand as humanly possible. I often don't consider IKEA for that reason, but I realized a lot of fashion-editor friends had mentioned using IKEA's Pax wardrobe system. I decided to at least go take a look.
The Ikea Pax system on display at Ikea. Seeing all of the possibilities sold me on doing this for my own closet. Seen here are a series of shelves, rods, and a pull-out pants rack.
More options for the Ikea pax. This option came with a mirrored door and pull out wire cabinets, all in a darker gray.
After arriving at the IKEA in Red Hook, I sped over to the Pax closet area and instantly knew this would be the solution to my problem. I thought it would feel a little limited since there are only a handful of specific-sized frames, but there are several configurations you can put them in. Not to mention, the inserts, from pullout drawers to shoe shelves to jewelry drawers, felt very luxe.
After seeing everything in person, I went home to use the online Pax wardrobe-planning tool to decide how to maximize the space in the room. It was pretty easy to use, and it gave me flashbacks to the kind of interior design I did as a child playing The Sims. That being said, it was fun! I toyed around with the inserts and saw which frames fit the most clothing, and when I was done, I just added everything to my cart.
The lead time for a custom closet can be months, but everything for my IKEA Pax arrived in days—days! IKEA also partners with Taskrabbit, so you can hire someone for an additional cost to set everything up. However, my boyfriend volunteered to do it himself, and who am I to deny him? Turns out, everything is relatively easy to build. Within a couple of hours—after many hours spent moving around piles of clothing to make room for the actual furniture—the closet started to come together, and it really did look even better than I could have imagined.
The beginning of my walk-in closet process! Still have to move lots of clothing and accessories into the space, but I cannot believe how elevated this feels.
Each cabinet could easily fit multiple rods to hang things from, which I really appreciated. I opted for two shelves at the bottom to add in some space for items I like to fold.
These pull-out inserts for the drawers really spoke to me. I love how clean it'll make all of my jewelry collection look. Not to mention it's also great for glasses storage.
I also particularly loved the glass cabinets. Some people don't love to see all of their clothing out, but for me it helps me visual my outfits better if I know what's in each drawer.
The best part is that the storage frames are so tall that you can easily hang a couple of clothing rods in one. The clothing that took up multiple racks fit so seamlessly into one section. I mostly used the shelves for shoes and was surprised to see just how many pairs could fit on each one. The drawers and pullout shelves, specifically built with jewelry and glasses in mind, were also far fancier than I imagined they would be. By the time it was all done, I could not even recognize the room. Finally, it looked like something out of a '90s fashion movie instead of my clothing-mountain nightmare.
Below, shop everything you need to get started on building a closet with the IKEA Pax system.
Shop the IKEA Pax closet system below.
