How much closet do you actually need?
Count what you own. The calculator turns it into rail, shelf and drawer, then into a wall — and tells you honestly whether that wall is a reach-in, a walk-in, or a dressing room with an island. It runs on the same rules our designers start from.
The calculator · updates as you type
Your wall, drawn to scale
Elevation · schematicA planning sketch, not a shop drawing. Bays are split at about 42 inches, the widest span we like a rod to carry.
Every number on this page, shown.
A closet is arithmetic before it is anything else. These are the rules the calculator runs — most of them published in the journal, a few of them plain assumptions we chose and say so. The result is a planning estimate: a good first answer, not a drawing.
Capacity is rail length times hanger pitch.
A slim flocked hanger takes about an inch of rail, so twelve garments to the foot. A standard hanger takes about an inch and a half. A wooden suit hanger takes about two inches, six to the foot, and a winter coat about three. Jackets and suits are counted at no less than two inches, because tailoring wants a shaped hanger whatever you use for shirts. We add ten percent so hangers slide rather than wedge. The long version is in double-hang closet math.
| Hanger | Rail each |
|---|---|
| Slim flocked | ~1″ · 12 per ft |
| Standard | ~1½″ · 8 per ft |
| Wooden suit | ~2″ · 6 per ft |
| Winter coat | ~3″ · 4 per ft |
What a garment drops decides where it hangs.
Measured hook to hem: a shirt drops 30 to 34 inches, trousers folded over the bar 26 to 30, a blazer 38 to 40. All of those fit under a rod at about 41 inches and another at about 82 — double hang, twice the rail in the same width. Full-length trousers at 44 to 46, a day dress at 46 to 52, an overcoat at 52 to 56 and a gown or long coat at 62 to 70 need a single rod near 66 inches with about 70 inches of clear drop.
| Garment | Drop · hang |
|---|---|
| Trousers, folded | 26–30″ · double |
| Shirt | 30–34″ · double |
| Blazer | 38–40″ · double |
| Trousers, full length | 44–46″ · long |
| Day dress | 46–52″ · long |
| Overcoat | 52–56″ · long |
| Gown, long coat | 62–70″ · long |
Double hang needs eighty-four inches.
Two rods need at least 84 inches of clear height, 88 if you want the lower hems to breathe. In prewar closets the ceiling of the closet is rarely the ceiling of the room: a plaster soffit over the door often lands at 80 to 84 inches, and that is where double hang stops. When the room runs to nine feet or more, we close in cabinets above the top rod to the crown for luggage and the off-season. The calculator draws that upper storage but does not count it.
Folded things want shallow shelves and short stacks.
Shelves for knits run 12 to 14 inches deep; deeper, and stacks topple. We assume about nine sweaters to a 12-inch-wide stack, two stacks to a 24-inch shelf at roughly 13 inches of pitch, and about 11 inches of shelf per handbag. The shelf over a long-hang rod is counted for handbags. T-shirts and small folded things go in drawers, at roughly fifteen to a drawer, with drawer banks kept below hand height.
Three pairs to a shelf, seven to nine inches apart.
A flat shelf holds about one pair per 8 to 9 inches of width, which we round to three pairs on a 24-inch shelf, at an 8-inch pitch. Boots get their own shelves with an 18-inch gap. Under double hang, the lower hems stop well clear of the floor, so we count one row of shoes there too.
From rail to wall, and wall to room.
Double-hang rail is halved, because each foot of wall carries two rods. Long hang counts foot for foot. Shelves, shoes and drawers fill 24-inch towers, each about 84 inches of usable height. Hanging is 24 inches deep. A typical 60-inch New York reach-in leaves about 57 inches clear — 4¾ feet of rail on one rod, 9½ double-hung — and drawn properly it nets roughly forty percent more usable storage than the builder's rod and shelf. A single-sided walk-in starts at about 4½ feet of clear width, a double-sided one at about 7, and an island needs about 3 feet of aisle on every side, which puts the room near 10 feet wide. The reasoning is in walk-in dimensions that actually work.