Among the things that interior designers frequently wax lyrical about is the importance of storage. And they’re right to be evangelical about it. Get your storage right and it can totally transform the look and feel of your home, creating a sense of order and calm that will make daily life a breeze; get it wrong and your home can quite quickly become chaotic, cluttered and a little out of control.
But, as anyone who has tried to tackle their own storage situation will know, it can be a tricky process – not least because of the seemingly endless options. There are off-the-peg pieces, bespoke builds and many, many different ways to approach each room. Indeed, our own pages are filled with countless storage ideas and inspiration. So to help make things more digestible, and to allow for a more focused approach, we have asked some of our trusted interior designers to share their single-most effective storage solution, tried-and-tested in their own homes and in their projects.
Sally Wilkinson
I love sourcing antiques that are as practical as they are beautiful. When choosing pieces for a space, I think as carefully about function as I do about appearance. For avid collectors like me, a cabinet with well-fitted shelves for excess candlesticks and glassware is invaluable, as is a chest of drawers that earns its place through generous proportions. Often, we’ll have the interiors of antique case pieces thoughtfully retrofitted to suit their contents, for example, lining drawers with felt for silver collections. When storage is built into something well made and well loved, it’s a win-win.
Lonika Chande
An ottoman bed is life changing. Half is dedicated to my children’s growing artwork collection, and I use these A3 personalised fabric box files by Harris & Jones to keep it all in relative order. The other half I use to store Christmas decorations, wrapping paper and cards. It’s also my secret hiding place for presents.
Nicholas Hodson-Taylor
Drop down hanging rails – I find myself using these more and more when designing dressing rooms so you can get drawers or shelves at low level and still have two levels of hanging rails above to make most use of higher areas.
On nearly every project, I use the idea of jib doors and screen curtains to hide storage. Storage is always paramount in projects, but multiple case pieces of furniture or monolithic built-ins can really throw the feel of a room. I like to expand on the idea of a below-counter curtain and use full-height drapery to screen large fixed joinery, giving a soft but still artistic architectural detail rather than busy cabinetry doors. But when doors are a must, I will push for jib doors – these then take the same wall finish as the room, be it paint finish, wallpaper or fabric. This allows me to design for the maximum storage potential but minimal aesthetic impact on the room as a whole.
Georgie Stogdon
The first thing that springs to mind is an antique haberdashery cupboard that I bought from D&A Binder, which specialises in old shop fittings. I have it in my studio – it has 28 drawers and allows me to organise all my samples.
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Sophie Rowell
We created some bedside storage in a recent Camberwell project, which involved extending the chimney breast on both sides to incorporate hidden storage. We used the void on ‘his’ side to create these shelves, and on ‘her’ side the storage really is completely hidden behind the wall.
Clare Gaskin
The storage solution that’s made the biggest difference for me at home is the wall of concealed cabinetry hidden behind the basins in our bathroom. From the outside, the basin area reads as calm and uncluttered, but behind it sits a surprisingly generous run of storage that holds everything we actually use every day. My side contains make-up, jewellery, toiletries and those in-between bits that otherwise migrate across surfaces; my husband has a mirrored set-up behind his basin; and the central section is shared family storage (first-aid kits, suncream, everyday essentials). The door fronts are repurposed red Perspex sourced from Retrouvius, so they bring the colour pop that we both love – and they are really easy to keep clean. What’s changed everything is that nothing needs to be put away elsewhere. It’s all immediately to hand, but completely out of sight. The result is a bathroom that feels serene and ordered, without ever feeling impractical, which, for a family home, is the holy grail.
In our bedroom, the storage solution that’s genuinely improved how the space feels is using curtains to conceal a walk-in wardrobe area, rather than an abundance of expensive joinery. Behind the fabric is a very simple, almost old-fashioned set-up – inherited chest of drawers, open hanging on rails, and just enough structure to work hard without over-engineering it. I love the softness and flexibility of the curtain: it hides visual noise instantly, introduces texture and warmth, and allows the room to feel calm even when life isn’t perfectly organised. It’s a reminder that storage doesn’t always need to be architectural or expensive to be effective. The fabric panels were re-used from our WOW!house Artist’s Studio of 2023. Sometimes fabric does the heavy lifting, both practically and emotionally, making the space feel more restful as a result.
Emma Ainscough
Freestanding pieces in a dining room – I often use an oversized, antique dresser with plenty of storage. They are always most useful with a mixture of solid doors and glazed doors to hide the bits you don’t want on show. It always ends up housing overflow from the kitchen and can be for nicer homeware for entertaining et cetera, as well as table linens and extra sets of crockery. A sideboard can act in a similar way, but I find there is something lovely about the antique dressers – they tell a story and add that bit of nostalgia and character to a space. I often source them from Adam Lloyd.
