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Last year, I had the pleasure of collaborating with designer Stephanie Stokes on her first book, Elegant Rooms That Work: Fantasy and Function in Interior Design, just released by Rizzoli last spring. It not only offers a window into sophisticated, classically grounded style (Stephanie’s signature), but also provides a cache of useful information for imaginative, upscale storage solutions; practical furniture arrangements; and other elements that make the most out of every quarter inch of space a room has to offer. I’ve been inspired to adopt some of these solutions in my own modest Westchester home. Here are six creative storage solutions you’re going to want to consider, too.
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- It was living in that same apartment that led to another of Stokes’ clever innovations. “One morning, I rolled over in bed and noticed two unused inches of space between the arched wall and a cabinet,” she remembers. “That is how I invented my sideways drawers for necklaces and earrings.” The vertically-oriented drawers are outfitted with racks and hooks to comfortably hang necklaces and earrings, rather than get them all tangled up in a jewelry box. “They’re the envy of every woman who comes into my bedroom,” she says.
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- Westchester is filled with homes built in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, many once heated by radiators that have long since been replaced with more sophisticated ventilation systems and ductwork. Though the cabinets constructed to conceal them may still contain smaller, more efficient heating elements, most hide a wealth of space that can be used for storage. In dining rooms, this is an ideal place to stow candlesticks, vases, and other table decorations. In bedrooms, they can hold linens. In living rooms, coasters, candy dishes…whatever.
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- How many master beds in Westchester boast textile hangings behind the headboard that rise to a canopy or corona? It’s a romantic, perennially popular style, and one with hidden potential. “Years ago, I lived in a gorgeous 1,000-square-foot studio in Manhattan’s east 60s,” recalls Stokes. “I was an investment banker and attended many formal functions that required me to have a ready supply of evening dresses. Of course, the closet in this apartment was typically ridiculous in a specifically New York City way. The only place I could store them was in a four-inch-deep space behind the bed hangings.” Why eat up valuable closet space with those billowy evening gowns you wear to charity events? The height of the hangings means full-length outfits don’t touch the ground. It’s also an ideal place to stash that wedding dress you keep meaning to have made into a cocktail shift.
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- The primary functions of those toe kicks under your kitchen cabinets are to float them attractively off the floor and to offer space to partially tuck your feet underneath, so you can stand closer to the counter while slicing and dicing. But, Stephanie Stokes asks, “who has space to waste with an inert toe kick?” In her kitchen designs, this space houses touch-latch drawers with wire handles that pull out to accommodate culinary accoutrements. Flat items such as serving trays and platters, placemats, and tablecloths are an ideal fit. But you can really use them for anything that’s squat, such as mugs, shallow soup bowls, napkin rings—the possibilities are legion. Imagine the shelf space that frees up!
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- Today, libraries do double and triple duty as home offices, guestrooms, and media rooms. In our brave new digital world of Kindles and Nooks, some might not even hold “real” books! But that doesn’t mean you can’t evoke the old leather-bound warmth and charm of those cozy libraries of yesteryear. “For most of my clients,” says Stokes, “the library is a popular place to gather for drinks or an after-dinner brandy, so they require a bar.” In her libraries, cabinet doors carved and painted to look like rows of books maintain the aesthetic of the actual book-lined shelves, but conceal the bar, and glassware above it. Liquor bottles are stored in drawers that frame the bar cabinet, and wine in racks stacked atop them.
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- Innovations in audiovisual-equipment design have mercifully rid us of those behemoth TV sets that used to demand massive “media centers” in our family rooms to dissimulate their bulk. “When we digitized my 900 CDs and swapped the big old clunker for a flatscreen television,” explains Stokes, “it freed enough space to create compartments behind the screen for hanging files and office supplies. The load of files and supplies is so heavy that four sets of industrial glides were installed underneath the television platform to make the TV and files easy to slide in and out.”
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