Many people dream of owning a house with walk-in closets. If you’re tired of having to cram all your clothes into a small closet or fighting for space with your spouse, walk-in closets might seem like the ideal solution, but they can have downsides.
Organization
If you own a lot of clothing and accessories and you currently have a small or average-sized closet, clothes that are hanging might be pushed so close together that they get wrinkled. If you have a lot of hats or purses, it can be hard to find a way to store them that doesn’t leave them vulnerable to damage. Stacks of shoe boxes can make it difficult to find the pair you want.
A walk-in closet can make it easy to spread out belongings and arrange clothing and accessories by type of item, color or season. Walk-in closets typically have shelves to organize shoes, hats, handbags and boxes. That can help you find what you want and reach it without having to move other items.
If you’re not good at getting and staying organized, however, a walk-in closet could be a recipe for disaster. You might have trouble finding things and be late when you need to go somewhere. You might not even wear some of your clothes if they got lost somewhere in the walk-in closet and you forgot that you owned them.
Privacy and Security
A walk-in closet can serve as a private dressing room. You can put mirrors and lighting in there to see how you look in different outfits before deciding which to wear. The privacy of a walk-in closet may be important to you if you have kids who sometimes enter your bedroom without knocking.
A walk-in closet can be used to store more than clothing and accessories. It might even have enough space to put a safe where you can keep valuables.
Temptation to Acquire More
A potential downside of a walk-in closet is that having all that space might tempt you to buy more clothes, shoes and accessories, and you could wind up with another overflowing closet. Before you buy a house with walk-in closets, ask yourself if you would use it as an excuse to spend money on things you didn’t need.
Space
Square footage devoted to a walk-in closet is space that cannot be used for rest and relaxation. Buying a house with walk-in closets might not be a good idea if the rest of the bedroom is too small to suit your needs.
Resale Value
Even if you think that the house you buy will be your permanent home, circumstances may change. Keep resale value in mind when you go house-hunting. Many people who are searching for a new home have walk-in closets on their list of priorities, but large closets could be a downside if the bedroom didn’t have enough living space.
