How to Make Your Closet Feel Like a High End Boutique

We all love the feeling of walking into a designer store or high end boutique. The aesthetic is on point and the vibe just hits different. It’s somewhere you enjoy spending time.

Imagine having that feeling every time you walk into your closet?

With these tips you’ll be able to transform your closet, no matter how much or how little space you are working with.

These tips can be implemented as many times as you want throughout the year. If maintained properly, you should only have to do a clean and purge twice a year though. The organization of your closest should stay relatively the same, unless you want to switch things up a bit or change what’s displayed on shelving.

Considering we get dressed every day, it’s important to feel good when you’re spending time in your closet. It’s also one of the first spaces you spend time in and will take part in setting the tone for the day. Having a space that makes you feel confident, inspired, and just happy is going to help you get each day started on the right foot.

Start with a Clean Slate

No one likes a musty closet and that definitely does not give off a luxury aesthetic. Much of the “eau de musty” comes from the amount of dust that piles up in your closet over time.

The best way to combat that is to take a page out of Eminem’s book and clean out that closet. I recommend doing this quarterly or at least twice a year. It will go a long way to keep things feeling, and smelling fresh.

Take everything out, literally everything, and wipe down walls, shelving, inside drawers, the hanging rods, hangers, light fixtures if you have them, and clean the floor. If you have carpet, I recommend purchasing a small carpet cleaner on Amazon or renting one for the day from your hardware store.

Adding some lavender pouches are a great way to keep your closet smelling fresh, but you can also add plug in air fresheners or essential oil diffusers depending on the size of your closet.

Once you’ve deep cleaned the closet you can start going through your clothes and purging what you no longer need - this process is covered next - or if you’re between purges you can start re-organizing everything and putting your closet back together.

Do Seasonal Purges

This may seem like an obvious tip, get rid of what you don’t wear, but the timing here is what’s key. Most people will try to go through their entire closet at once and in my opinion that’s a big mistake.

The problem?

You either are lazy to try on non seasonal stuff because “you’re not going to wear it any time soon anyway” or you battle with the idea of keeping items because “you might wear it once it’s [future season] again”.

Sound familiar?

By purging your closet 2x per year you will be motivated to try on what you’ll be wearing for the upcoming season, and you will have a second opportunity to get rid of items that you didn’t end up using from the previous season.

At the beginning of Fall/Winter browse through your Spring/Summer wardrobe and part ways with anything that you didn’t end up wearing, and items you wore too much that need to be replaced.

Then go through your Fall/Winter wardrobe and decide what isn’t in style anymore or is something you don’t see yourself wearing, and items that no longer fit you and cannot be tailored.

Flip and repeat this process for Spring/Summer.

Doing this at the beginning of each season can help you identify what pieces are missing from your wardrobe, and what types of clothing just sat there and didn’t really get any love. This will help to eliminate uncertainty when shopping, and ideally reduce the amount of items you buy and never end up wearing.

How to Hang Your Clothes Aesthetically

Obviously there are many ways to approach this. As long as they are functional and organized, none of them are necessarily right or wrong. Here’s my take on it.

The first thing you have to decide is what to fold vs. what you’ll be hanging. If you don’t have a ton of closet space this is especially important. Overstuffing your closet by hanging everything will always look messy and disorganized.

If you don’t have a large amount of hanging space, or you do but you just have way too many clothes, then “swapping your wardrobe” is a great option. This means putting out of season clothes either in drawers or in another closet where they won’t be taking up space in your primary closet’s hanging space.

This not only makes things easier to find it will instantly declutter your space and make it look more aesthetic.

If you have the space to hang all your clothes without it looking cluttered then you will want to do a “closet flip”, moving all in-season clothes to the front and out of season clothes to the back for easier access.

Once you’ve decided what to hang and organized your clothes by season, section them based on everyday clothes, dressy clothes, and formal clothes or dresses. This keeps your most worn items towards the front and easily accessible.

Within each section you want to organize everything by length, from shortest to longest. This, and color organization are a quick ways to instantly up-level your closet space. Typically this will end up being something similar to what is listed below, with tank tops and crop tops being first, and long sleeve shirts or sweaters last.

Lastly, sorting each of these sections by color. I learned this from my time in retail and have always organized my closet like this ever since. Starting with your neutrals, white, tan/nude, grey, black in front, followed by colors lightest to darkest, organized by “the rainbow” or ROYGBIV:

• Red (with pinks first)

• Orange

• Yellow

• Green

• Blue

• Indigo

• Violet (aka purple)

To summarize:

• Organize by Season: spring/summer, fall/winter

• Section by Type: everyday shirts, dressy shirts, pants, dresses

• Hang by Length: crop tops & tanks, fitted t-shirts, long sleeves, large t-shirts, light jackets, sweaters

• Sort by Color: white, tan/nude, grey black at the front followed by colors ROYGBIV

Details That Make the Difference

When you walk into a store, notice how the clothes are neatly folded, shoe straps are done up and bags are perfectly displayed.

You want to do the same thing in your closet!

Make sure to fold clothes neatly on shelves. Follow the same color organization (ROYGBIV) that you would for hanging clothes. Clothing items that look good when folded are sweaters, jeans, and any other bulkier and stiff clothing. Things like t-shirts, silk blouses, or anything that is thin or “slippery” will never look good folded and stacked. You want it to look like a perfect stack of pancakes, not a wilted plant.

Tuck laces inside shoes, do up straps on heels, and make sure shoes are evenly spaced and you’re putting the same number of shoes on each shelf. Follow a similar process for handbags, tuck purse straps inside bags if possible, close any flaps or latches. Essentially display shoes and handbags the way they were when you purchased them.

Other Quick Closet Tips

• To avoid clutter on shelves for purses or shoes follow the 80/20 rule, 80% of the shelf should be taken up by the item, 20% should be for spacing.

• Under shelving lighting with motion sensors will give any closet space a luxurious look and can be added pretty easily and is relatively inexpensive if you do it yourself

• When possible, opt for wood shelving instead of wire shelving, it will always look better and is worth the investment

• Opt for plastic storage bins instead of cloth, the cloth ones look cheap and collect a ton of dust

• Maximize space by hanging sets together

• Make sure your hangers match to give a uniform look

• Use kid’s hangers for pants, they take up less space and prevent your pants from sliding around

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