An entryway closet idea - simple built-in

Maximizing minimal spaces doesn’t have to be expensive or labour-intensive. This entryway closet idea took 1 ½ sheets of plywood and 3 coat rods, for a whopping total of $310 CDN ($228 USD)!

*This post contains affiliate links to products I used in this build so that you may easily find what you need if you decide to try this project. For full affiliate disclosure, please see the bottom of the page.

We moved!

The girls and I downsized to a one-storey house over the summer, and while I LOVE 99% of it, the closets weren’t quite enough to hold all of our gear.

This is our front hall closet:

It’s your standard entryway closet with a single hanging rod with shelf.

We had a mudroom at our old house, complete with 3 hanging sections and shoe shelves in the middle, so we needed to cram a lot into this little space.

I thought I could get away with a Closetmaid pre-fab drawer system:

It cost a fortune at $230 CDN and only really held about 8 pairs of shoes. It also ate up a TON of hanging real estate, so this was a no-go for sure.

What we really needed was a small section for long-hanging coats, a section for winter boots and then shelves for shoes/keys/hats/mitts. No small feat for such a small space.

I got to work in sketchup and used the bare minimums in spacing to come up with a plan to maximize the storage.

Entryway closet idea

Standard closet built-in dimensions

These numbers will help you if/when you decide to build;

the total depth of standard closets is 24″.
the coat rods should be hung 12″ in from the back wall.
the coat rods should be hung 2 ½” below any shelves
standard double-hang closet rod heights are 42″ for the lower and 80-84″ for the upper hanging rod. This is for a coat closet, clothing closets have different heights.
the depth of your shelves can be anywhere from 14″ to 24″. I used 14″ to save on wood and since it’s all you need to attach the coat rod to.

You’ll find variations of these numbers online, but this is what I worked with and nothing is crunched or bunched anywhere.

The plan

I only have a couple of long-hanging coats, so 16″ allowed space for them to hang without eating up too much space.

The shoe shelves I skinnied-down to 10″ wide to give ‘just enough’ space for a single pair of shoes, or two pairs if we pile the pairs on top of each other, and that left more than enough space for double-hanging for the rest of our Spring/Fall/Winter jackets.

The bottom shelf is up 12″ from the floor to allow for our winter boots. I still have to fold my calf-height boots, but there was no point wasting space for one pair.

Using ¾” plywood and 1 ¼” pocket screws, I built the bottom shelf to reach right to the walls, but attached the vertical supports just inside the baseboards. I didn’t see any need for removing the baseboards since they are hidden in-behind anyways.

Then it came time to remove the wire shelving and let me tell you, these are a b!tch to remove! They are almost always hung with drywall plugs in behind and there is no way to remove the brackets without actually ripping bits of the drywall out.

You’ll notice the size of my patching job below – SO FRUSTRATING!

From here I attached the verticals for the shoe shelves using 1 ¼” pocket hole screws. I cut 7″ spacers so that the shelves were easily installed without re-measuring a million times.

If you’re looking at the above photo and thinking “Shelly, something about your entryway closet idea is crooked?“, I would agree with you 100%.

BUT, I measured, re-measured, checked with a level about a dozen times, and then my daughter came and checked with a level as well.

It is spot-on! Seriously – every shelf is perfectly level – so I have no idea why it looks off?

The 3 ½” braces on the wall are for shelves to rest on.

I ripped down some ½” x 3 ½”” pre-primed MDF baseboards to 1″ wide and attached them using 1″ trim nails to the fronts of the shelves to trim it all out.

Use crown and trim caulking to fill in the nail holes and all of the seams for a professional built-in look.

After sanding, it was time to get the closet primed ready for painting. (You know my saying: “it always looks worse before it looks better”)

I sanded everything smooth, then put on two coats of Scuff-X which should be super-durable and easy to clean.

Tip: always paint your closets white. If your closets are white, it doesn’t matter what colour the room around it is; it looks intentional. But if you paint your closet, let’s say yellow, when you go to paint the room a different colour later on, the closet has to get done as well. (Learned this the hard way). I apologize to the person that bought our old house for the yellow, green, and beige closets that I was too lazy to repaint.

Add in your closet rods (I LOVE these wall anchors) and you’re ready to go!

I did make one mistake that I’ll have to correct; the shelf above the lower hanging bar is too high. You only really need about 2 ½” of clearance between the closet rod and the shelf. Here, I’ve given 3 ½” which means the shelf is a bit too high to give the upper coats enough room to hang.

Since everything is attached with pocket hole screws, this is an easy fix, although it will mean paint touch-ups which I just wasn’t in the mood for the day I completed the front hall closet.

I need to add another shelf or two to the top of the shoe section, but I wanted to play with our gear to see exactly what entryway closet ideas would work for our space.

I’m also thinking that if it doesn’t get too jammed up with coats, I might add hooks along the side of the shoe shelves for dog leashes.

We’ll see… I still have to find the rest of the moving boxes that have the girls’ winter gear.

The shoe shelves were spaced with high-heels in mind, and while I don’t have many myself, it’s nice to have the extra spacing just in case.

The upper closet rod is high, but I’m 5’8″ and my youngest is 5’9″ so easily reached for us. It also gives a section for out-of-season coats that you probably won’t grab on a regular basis.