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Walk-in closets are such a sure sign of domestic luxury—a whole room dedicated to the storage of sweaters and shoes!—that they can feel entirely out of reach for the average homeowner. (Especially anyone who is short on square footage to begin with.) Enter this unusually narrow walk-in by California Closets from the studio apartment of interior designer Julia Haney Montanez in Manhattan—and yes, you read that right: a studio apartment with a walk-in closet. The closet runs along one short side of the rectangular room and is defined by just two small walls. An open doorway between the walls gives way to an an expertly laid-out closet in the 40-inch-deep space on the other side.
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The exposed-brick partitions already existed when Montanez bought into the 400-square-foot home—but owners of all studio apartments could take note: So long as you can spare 40 inches of depth along one wall in the room, it can be transformed into a walk-in just by putting up drywall and a door to section it off (or, as in Montanez's space, two small walls with an opening between them). Stacy Skolsky, the design consultant at California Closets who worked on this closet, says that the key to making such a shallow space work as a walk-in is to put the garment racks along the short sides—since they need to be about two feet wide to hold hangers. Then, along the long wall, drawers and shelves in standard 14-inch depths can be put up (with a basic system like Elfa if you want to do it on a budget; with a system like this one from California Closets if you want it looking super crisp and bespoke), which will leave enough room to actually walk in and use the space.
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According to Michael Kavin, CEO of Kavin Construction in Los Angeles, installing a standard eight-by-eight-foot drywall should cost you between $500 and $750—and about one and a half times that to add a second of the same size and shape. So for an investment of a little over $1000, plus the cost of curtain rods (hardware store!) and shelving, you can basically fashion a walk-in out of thin air in an existing rectangular room. And the door really is optional: In order to ensure that the opening into her closet didn't reveal a mess at any given moment, Montanez opted to use the shelving and drawers as a vanity in the middle, which could just as easily be done by adding a chest of drawers and a mirror atop it.
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