If you follow me on Instagram, then you’ve likely seen/heard me mention that as a Christmas gift to each other Hasani and I are re-doing our entire master bedroom closet. This project is long overdue! Our current closet is a hot mess a complete disaster, lacking functional storage and zero organization. When we re-built our home in 2013 after a house fire, we decided to make some improvements to our original 1950’s floor plan. We added a small walk-in closet and bathroom on to our master bedroom.

We love our new master bedroom closet, our old closet as a small 5 foot wide reach in closet that was tiny and too small for two adults. Our closet now is 5 x 8 about the size of a small bathroom (the exact size of our closet is 61 deep by 95 wide. Our plan after moving back into our home was to create a custom closet, but life gets in the way and we never got around to it, plus the task of designing a closet at the time felt daunting. Instead we brought in two storage towers and Hasani added one clothing rod to each side of the closet. Simply put there wasn’t enough storage for our clothes both folded and hanging clothes.

After searching for closet solutions, I quickly landed on the IKEA PAX closet system, I loved all the different configurations for clothing rods, drawers, shelves and accessories. The affordable price point makes The pretty accessory drawers were a huge selling point for me! Having a special place in my closet to hold sunglasses, jewelry feels like a dream. I also love that this closet system has been around for ages, meaning when we want to update / change a part of the closet, a quick trip to Ikea makes it possible.

IKEA PAX CLOSET INSPIRATION

While on the hunt for IKEA PAX closet inspiration, I came across some amazingly organized closets. They gave me major closet goals!

I love the pull-out drawer options to hold all the accessories,

images via Garrison Street Designs and ikea

IKEA PAX CLOSET DESIGN

With a design plan in mind for my closet, I enlisted the help of my best friend Sarah to help me maximize our closet to its full potential. She has amazing closet design expertise and she can rock an IKEA Pax closet system like nobody can! She’s had several different configurations of a PAX closets in her own home + is an organization queen!

Sarah and I talked through my design ideas, we both agreed that a gallery walk-in closet made the most sense for our space. The plan is for Hasani and I to have our own individual closet sides, that a geared toward our personal needs. I prefer to have most of my closet folded (jeans and sweaters), with blouses, shirts and dress hung up. Hasani prefers to have most of his hung up with a few clothes folded.

Sarah and I visited IKEA together to see the closet in person and confirm the design plans for our space. If your planning to add a IKEA PAX closet to your space, I highly recommend visiting the store before buying, to see all the design possibilities in person. I’m a super visual person, so seeing the PAX closet in action really helps me solidify the design plan. In addition to visiting in store, I used the online closet planning tools to configure my closet and add all the items on a ‘closet shopping’ list.

On Hasani’s side of the closet, they’ll be two hanging rods and lots of open shelves on his smaller PAX Frame and four drawers.

Below is a screen shot of the design plan for my side of the closet. To take maximize our closet, we’re opted to go with the 92 inch in height frames, yay for no wasted space. On my side, I’ll have one 39 inch frame and one 19 inch frame, that will total 59 inches wide. The upper shelve on my frames will be reserved for hats and sweaters. I’ll have two hanging rods one for blouses and t-shirts and the smaller clothing rod for dresses and coats. I’ll have a total of four drawers + a large pull-out accessory drawer. I might be able to fit one more drawer on my side so we’ll see! On the side with dresses I’ll have three shelves to hold my heels. I’m hoping to use one of my large drawers to hold my other shoes like flats and tennis shoes out of sight.

Now for the scary part, sharing how our closet looked just a few days ago before cleaning everything out and purging all the extra junk and crap pilled up in our closet. Brace your selves its a hot mess express!

On Friday, Hasani and I headed to Ikea to pick up all the items to build our PAX Closet, which was so exciting! Over the weekend we started building our closet and hope to have everything built along by mid week. I’m so excited to walk into 2019 with a clean organized closet, where everything has a spot vs. the crazy closet mess we’ve dealing with for ages.

I’ll be back soon with more closet updates! What’s your closet situation? If your closet is perfectly organized, how do you keep it that way? Spill all your secrets.

I’m so excited about new living room update. Over the past year I’ve been making a little tweaks here and there to my living room. It all kicked off when Hasani and I added built-in bookcases to our living room which was an amazing addition.

The bookcase brought in much needed hidden and vertical storage and helped make our small 1950’s living room feel larger.

One thing I wasn’t loving is how off the our drum shade was looking and feeling in our living room. Over the years the drum shade had accumulated a layer of dust making it look yellow and no matter how I tried to clean it, in the above picture you can see how off the light was looking.

The light fixture was killing the entire vibe of my living room. I began my search a few months ago, looking for something that would be more sculptural and lean towards mid century modern, but feel modern. Check out this recent post for modern lighting ideas for the living room.

I’m a huge fan of layered lighting in living rooms to help set the mood, in our living room we have a central light, recessed lights and lamps. The more lighting options I have the better! I’m so in love with our new light fixture, it has a modern glam vibe and looks so stunning our living room.

The lamp looks high-end without the sticker stock. Friends, are you sitting down, I found this amazing light fixture on Amazon for under $ 105.00 bucks! The Grammercy Light comes in a few different finishes and glass glob styles and down-rod extensions.

Since this light fixture is hanging our living room and we have standard 8 ft ceilings, we opted to use one six inch down-rod to keep the light fixture close to the ceiling.

The light looks so include and was easy to install, however this light does require a little assembly and the right light bulbs. Attached the globes on to the light fixture can be a little tricky so they’re glass and you want to make extra careful. But ones you get one glob on the light, the following ones go fast.

I’m a big fan of even lighting especially in living rooms, I don’t like crazy shadows. The frosted globe lights provide nice even lighting. The light fixture is bright, so use a dimmer! Honestly all the lights in your bedroom, dining room and living rooms should be a on a dimmer! Our center light is on a dimmer switch so we can easily control the brightness.

My least favorite thing is light bulb shopping, its a nightmare! And light bulbs are so expensive now, its crazy! For this light bulbs, I used LED Dimmable Light Bulbs (LED Dimmable are a must, yes they cost more) I’ll update this blog post with the exact light bulb we used to save you the trouble of going to 3 different stores like I had to find the right size light bulbs!

In addition to adding the light, I wanted to add a ceiling medallion to give some oomph to the light fixture and add dimension. I went with a white 16 inch medallion, that looks so good! I still need to caulk around the light fixture so everything lays nice and smooth. That’s tonight’s DIY Project!

SHOP THE LOOK

Check out my recent blog post for more modern lighting ideas for living room, here. I’m loving this light and how pretty it looks in our living room, it makes me so happy!

What do you think of our new light fixture and do you also finding shopping for light bulbs to be a nightmare?