I live in the south, and we’ve recently been hit with our sporadic dose of Carolina winter weather. You never know when it’s going to come – it may be November, it may be January, heck, it may even be February or March. But despite our winter season being quite mild, at some point those winter jackets are coming out of hiding and onto our backs.

Our home has no closet by the door. It’s almost an odd thing to notice – the house itself (not mine, my roommates) is very nice, and there’s ample opportunity as far as storage space to have had a closet built in by the door for us to store our coats.

But nope – no closet.

Which is what led me to look at shopping around for good free standing coat closets. I learned a thing or two about them in the process; important points about coat closets that I thought I’d share here with you, dear reader.

Coat Closets: What to Look for in a Good Coat Closet

1. There are a lot of options. It helps to know first what you are looking for.
What I mean by this is that there isn’t just a single type of closet furniture that you can point to and say “that’s a coat closet” that doesn’t have other uses, and vice versa. Many storage closets are sold to hold a variety of items, from office supplies to a persons wardrobe to coats. Some are wide open, like a wood garment rack, and others have closed doors, like a 3 door wardrobe armoire. Some are meant to be lightweight and basically portable. Others are meant to be heavy duty. The latter we are more interested in, which brings us to the next point.

2. It should hold a lot of weight since winter clothing is heavy.
A coat closet gets the most use when it’s the coldest outdoors, and this is precisely the time when the durability of a coat closet comes into play. When shopping for a coat closet, look for the maximum amount of weight it can hold. The more, the better.

3. You can definitely keep find a coat closet under $300.
The wide range of prices in coat closets reflects how willing we are to pay for a nice piece of furniture. But there come a point in which you don’t really get much more functionality for your money. Now by all means, if the coat closet is intended to add to the room as a piece of furniture in its own way, then feel free to leave the budget out of the picture. But if your main concern is simply having a solid wood coat closet, you can find something like this for about $300 or less that will do the trick. Any more than that and you’re paying for aesthetics, which may or may not be worth it for you.

4. Before you spend all that money, organize any nearby closet first that could function as coat closet.
If you’ve already got a closet by the front door, why not use that as the coats closet? If the reason is that it’s jammed pack full of clothes already, you might be surprised to learn how much space can be leveraged out of a messy closet by first organizing. For some ideas on closet organization, take a look at our articles on closet organizers.

5. High quality, durable hangers belong in a high quality coat closet.
After going to the trouble of buying, shipping, unpacking, and then assembling a coat closet, don’t bring things down a notch by using cheap hangers that will end up being more trouble than they’re worth. Coats are heavy, and if you use light, cheap hangers, they are going to either snap or hold the coat lopsided, or worse yet, let it slip off. It’s better to invest in a good dozen set of quality, strong coat hangers from the start than to buy bad ones and then replace them when they break.

When winter rolls around, all of the cold weather gear is pulled out to be worn, which can create issues with storage. Would it not be much easier to simply have a space for all of these items where they can be stored safely when not in use and yet ready for the cold days of winter? Using wardrobe coat closets or even the classic wardrobe closet armoires are a great way to do this.

These come with drawers for storing hats, mittens and gloves where they can be out of the way and still easily accessed. Everything that is worn in the cold weather can be kept in these wardrobe coat closets without having to drag them out of other storage areas.

Not only are all of the cold weather items going to be safely stored, but these wardrobes and armoires are quite stunning to look at. Many come in all of the popular hard wood types as well as stains. They even come in more modern looks for those who have a more contemporary décor style.

There is no need to look at jackets, hats and gloves strewn all over the house when it is so easy to organize them. Using a wardrobe or armoire is the most practical as well as aesthetically pleasing way to keep these garments organized and ready to be used when the weather gets cold.  And to think, your clothing will no longer smell like moth balls from digging it out of storage every September!