Building A Closet Out Of Thin Air: IKEA Pax Tips
Building A Closet Out Of Thin Air: Ikea PAX Tips
When we moved into our house, the primary bedroom did not have a closet. It was a recessed area on one side of the room where we put up a builder grade wire shelf, a rod, and large sliding doors. And I hated it for about four years before we found the Ikea PAX system. We used their online planning system to create a functional, cost effective custom closet. Dan and I were able to install it together and our marriage survived through the whole thing. It has been about a year since we built out our closet and I wouldn’t change a thing!
In this post, I am going to share everything we learned about planning and installing an IKEA pax closet, including:
Overall impressions
Must have pieces/accessories
Tips for assembly
Ways we customized our closet
Cost breakdown
Overall Impressions
We LOVE our PAX system. Even though it was a lot of work to assemble, it was well worth it and very cost effective.
You can even assemble it over the course of a few nights (meaning, YES, it is possible to do this after your babies/kids go to sleep).
Some of the drawers had a little resistance at first, but this improved after using them a few times. We love the soft close feature of all the drawers.
This closet system truly does maximize your storage if you spend the time to design it the way you will use it.
It is great that you can live with it for a while and if you want to change the height of the rods, placement of the drawers or shelves, or add accessories, you can.
Must Have Pieces/Accessories
A ton of drawers:
This is the key to having your closet always look clean. Drawers hide clothes and undies and whatever else better than shelves do.
Pull-out pants hanger:
This pants hanger is something that I now can never live without. It is the best way to hang jeans and access all of them quickly.
Clothes Rail:
We have one clothes rail on Dan’s side of the closet, one on my side, and then one in the middle that it up higher, allowing for longer dresses and sweaters.
Tips For Assembly
Do this with two people! It will take two people to help get the large frames in place and screw them to the wall.
Use painters tape to mark where everything will be going in (drawers, shelves, etc).
You can find a summary of the hole numbers online on the PAX planner based on your design. Print this out to use as reference while building, or have your computer on hand.
Have one person assemble the drawers while the other person works on putting up shelves or assembling other parts.
You can also assemble the drawers ahead of time if you want
Ways We Customized Our Closet
We added trim on the bottom and across the top so that there were no gaps and it looked built in.
We also added an extra little set of shelves to the right of the closet to fill in the gap we were left with. This spot was too narrow to add another PAX frame, so Dan built narrow shelves where I now keep purses, shoes, and other random things.
After we (finally) bought the doors, we also bought hardware. Having door pulls really added the finishing touch.
Instead of buying the strip lights through Ikea, we bought these puck lights that are wireless to put in each closet frame.
Cost Breakdown
The total cost of our closet with all of the pieces we bought is $1431.00. We had the whole closet system set up for almost a year without doors, and then finally bought the doors. I am so happy we did!
All of the pieces that we used are listed individually as you build out your closet in the PAX planner.
Additional cost of hardware: $20 per pull (five total)
Here is a list of all the components that are in our closet
Wardrobe frame, white, 39 3/8x22 7/8x92 7/8 "
Wardrobe frame, white, 19 5/8x22 7/8x92 7/8 "
Komplement clothes rail, white
Komplement Shelf, white
Komplement Drawer, white
Komplement Pull-out pants hanger, white
Komplement Drawer with glass front, white
Komplement Divider for frame, white, 29 1/2-39 3/8x22 7/8 "