Small Dressing Room Ideas: My Custom Shoe Shelves

In a past life, I used to be a shoe blogger.

I just want to get that out of the way upfront so you’re not totally horrified when I show you my shoe collection: 

I know, it’s a lot. 

Before you go accusing me of having more money than sense, though (I REALLY wish that was the case, tbf…), let me further clarify that I didn’t actually go out and BUY all of these shoes. I bought some of them, obviously, but the vast majority of them were acquired during the course of my shoe blogging career, by brands who’d send them to me in exchange for coverage on my blog or Instagram. Sometimes I’d even get paid for it too, which was absolutely WILD to me, because I’d always loved shoes, so now I felt like I was living the dream, basically. 

The only problem was storage. 

When I started shoe blogging, I lived in a tiny, two bedroom house, in which one bedroom was used as an office. As my shoe collection grew, it became obvious I was going to need more storage for them, so eventually my husband built me a set of shoe shelves, which I loved with all my heart. 

But I’d also started fashion blogging by this point. 

I had even more clothes than I had shoes. 

So, when we moved house, we decided to turn the smallest bedroom into a dressing room, complete with custom-built shoe shelves, to house my collection. And here they are…

 

These shelves were made-to-measure, and were totally created by Terry himself to fit the space available. We did look at some ready-made options, like the Ikea ‘Expedit’ bookcase, but we quickly realised that if we wanted to maximise our use of the space, and get as many shoes in as possible, we would have to DIY it. Or rather, TIY it. (Er, that would be “Terry It Yourself.” ) The Ikea system, for instance, would’ve ended up costing us more (Especially given that we were able to re-use the wood from the old shelves to make these: Terry chopped them up to create the vertical dividers between each shoe…), but would only have given us half the storage these shelves provide, so although this solution was more effort to create, it’s a much better fit for the space.

Here’s what the shelves look like filled with shoes: 

Apologies if the photos in this post are making you feel sea-sick by the way: this ‘dressing room’ was originally a box room, and as the space is quite small (Which is one of the reasons we decided to go for custom shoe shelves, rather than just buying a ready-made version), it’s almost impossible to photograph it without it looking like this: 

I promise the walls aren’t on a slope, it just looks like they are…

(That’s a gloss laminate on the floor. I feel in love with it in the showroom, but do NOT recommend it, unfortunately, because it’s absolutely impossible to keep clean, and show up every single hair, spec of dirt, or even footprint that lands on it. Shortly after it was installed, we bought a rug to put over the top of it, and at some point in the future I’ll want to replace it with something lower maintenance, but I’m just having to live with it for now…)

I’ve had quite a few questions about how I chose to organise them, as there’s obviously a few different ways you could do it (colour, style, frequency of use, etc). For now, I’ve grouped them roughly by colour, but I’m not being too rigid about it: by keeping the rest of the room white, it allows the colours of the shoes to really pop, and as each pair has its own little ‘box’ to live in, I don’t think it would bother me too much if they were mixed up. 

I’ve tweaked the arrangement a little bit since then, and I’m sure I’ll change my mind a hundred times before I’m totally happy with where they all are, but for now I’m just enjoying having them all back in my life again, and in a place I can get to them without digging through three boxes first.

The other question I get a lot is about dusting, and whether they need a lot of it. 

They do need dusting, unfortunately – both the shelves and the shoes themselves – as anything does that’s on display on a shelf. I wouldn’t say they need a LOT of dusting – it’s not the kind of back-breaking chore that I find myself putting off for days, for instance – but yes, it’s obviously more maintenance than just storing them in a cupboard, or keeping them in their boxes. For me, the payoff is that I can see them all at a glance and easily find what I’m looking for; in our last house, most of my shoes were kept in boxes until I had shelves built for them, and I hated having to dismantle the pile and rummage through it every time I wanted to change my shoes, so I find this more convenient, even with the extra dusting it entails. With that said, of course, it goes without saying that I have a LOT of shoes, and so organising them is more of a challenge for me than is for most, so if you just have a few pairs you tend to wear on rotation, then this kind of shoe storage is probably not for you!

The other wall of this room, meanwhile, is taken up with clothes, bags, and also a few pairs of boots, which obviously wouldn’t fit into the compartments in these shoe shelves, so which had to be stored elsewhere in the room. I don’t have a lot of these, so don’t worry, you’re not missing anything amazing, but I’ll try to create another post soon on the dressing room itself, so stay tuned for that!