A closet design is only as good as the numbers it's built from. This guide walks you through measuring any closet — reach-in, walk-in, L-shaped, U-shaped, or an open wall — the same way our designers do it, then submitting those numbers for a free 3D design and price. It takes about fifteen minutes, and doing it properly here is what keeps your design from needing a second trip.

🧰 What you'll need

• A steel tape measure, 25 ft. A cloth or sewing tape will sag and read long — that's the single most common source of bad numbers.
• The printable worksheet below, or a pen and paper. Don't try to hold the numbers in your head; you'll be recording about twenty of them.
• Your phone, for the five photos in Step 5.
• A second person if the closet is wider than about 8 feet — a tape held solo across a long wall bows, and a bowed tape always reads too long.
• A step stool to reach ceiling height and the top of the door casing.

📐 Step 1 — Identify your closet shape

Find your closet below. The shape decides how many walls you measure and what you letter them — and every later step refers back to Wall A, Wall B, Wall C. Stand in the doorway looking in, and letter the walls left to right starting with the wall directly facing you. If your closet doesn't match any of these exactly, pick the closest one and tell us the difference in the notes; odd rooms are the reason we offer a fully custom line.

📏 Step 2 — The seven measurements

Take these seven in order, for every wall in your shape. A reach-in means doing it once for Wall A. A U-shape means doing steps 2 and 4 three times — once each for A, B, and C.

🧭 Step 3 — Notes for your shape

Reach-in

The seven measurements cover it, but be thorough about the opening: the finished opening width, both return walls, and the header. Also check whether the side walls are square to the back wall — hold your tape diagonally corner to corner both ways and compare. If the two diagonals differ by more than ½", the closet isn't square and we'll design in a scribe allowance.

One-wall walk-in

Add the walkway depth: from the face of Wall A to the opposite wall. You need about 36" of clear floor left over after the system depth for the closet to feel usable — a 24" run in a 54" room leaves 30", which is tight but workable; the same run in a 44" room is not.

Galley (two-wall)

Measure both walls independently — do not measure one and assume the other matches. Then measure the room's total width at the floor, at 36", and at the ceiling, because the aisle is what's left after both runs are installed. Two 24" runs in a 96" room leave a 48" aisle; the same runs in an 84" room leave 36", which works but feels snug when both sides have drawers that open toward each other.

L-shaped

Measure each leg from the inside corner outward — corner to the door, corner to the obstruction, corner to the end of the wall. Don't measure the full wall and subtract; errors compound.

Then check whether the corner is actually square. Measure each wall at the floor, at 36", and near the ceiling. In older homes corners commonly deviate two to three degrees, which reads as nothing to the eye and as a visible gap once a tall panel goes in.

U-shaped

Three walls, two corners, both with the same overlap problem as an L. Measure each wall from its inside corner outward, and measure the clear floor between the two side runs — you want about 42". Below roughly 36" of clear middle, a U-shape starts fighting itself and a galley or L layout will store more.

Open wall / wardrobe

Measure the full run of available wall, floor to ceiling height at both ends, and — critically — what bounds the run on each side: a window casing, a door swing, the edge of a soffit, a radiator, a light switch. An open run has no walls to stop it, so those boundaries are the design constraint. Note the ceiling height carefully; wardrobes are typically about 72" tall and what happens in the gap above matters.

Sloped ceilings, knee walls, and angled corners

These can appear in any shape. Add three numbers: the ceiling height at the tall end, the height at the short end (at the knee wall, measure floor to where the slope begins), and the horizontal distance between those two points. That's enough to reconstruct the angle. Then photograph it — a slope is one of the few things a photo communicates better than numbers.

👕 Step 4 — What you need to store

Measurements tell us what fits in the room. This tells us what goes in the closet, and it's the half most people skip. A 96" wall can be built as 96" of hanging or as a mix of hanging, drawers, and shoes — the numbers don't decide that, you do.

Count roughly, in linear feet of rod or just in garments. Our designers convert it:

Then tell us the things that don't hang: how many pairs of shoes and whether they're mostly flats or heels, whether you need a hamper or laundry pull-out, whether you fold or hang jeans, whether anything long — gowns, overcoats, wedding dress storage — needs a full-height section, and whether you want a seat, a mirror, an island, or a built-in desk.

📷 Step 5 — Take five photos

Photos catch what a tape measure misses. Empty the closet, turn on every light, and take these five:

1. Straight into the closet from the doorway, standing back far enough to get the full opening in frame.
2. The left corner, floor to ceiling.
3. The right corner, floor to ceiling.
4. Straight up at the ceiling, showing the light fixture, any vent, and any slope or soffit.
5. Straight down at the floor, showing the flooring type and the baseboard.

Add a sixth of anything unusual — the electrical panel, the attic hatch, the angled wall you couldn't quite describe. Photos of an odd condition save more back-and-forth than any other single thing you can send.

📊 Reference: standard dimensions

You don't need to design your closet — that's our job. But these are the numbers our designers work from, and knowing them helps you sanity-check whether your space can do what you're hoping.

Space and clearance

Heights and hanging

How much vertical space each garment needs

These are industry standards, not Apex-specific limits. Your designer will adjust every one of them to your height, your wardrobe, and your walls.

⚠️ Nine mistakes that cost a redesign

1. Measuring width once, in the middle. Walls bow. Three heights, smallest number wins.
2. Measuring the door opening instead of the wall. The closet behind a reach-in opening is almost always wider than the opening itself. We need both, labeled.
3. Forgetting the baseboard. It stands proud of the wall by a half inch or so, which is exactly why your floor-level width reads narrower than the others. Note its height and thickness.
4. Measuring over carpet that's about to be replaced. Tell us what's on the floor now and what will be there on installation day.
5. Rounding to the nearest inch. Use eighths. Rounding "up to be safe" is how a system ends up an inch too wide for the opening.
6. Skipping the header above a reach-in. It decides whether the top shelf runs full width.
7. Ignoring the door swing. A door opening inward eats about 36" of floor and every drawer in its path.
8. Assuming the corners are square. They usually aren't, by two or three degrees. Check the diagonals.
9. Using a cloth tape. It sags, it stretches, and it reads long. Steel only.

🖨️ Printable worksheet

Print this, take it into the closet with a pen, then type the numbers into the form below. People measure more accurately with paper in hand than with a phone in one hand and a tape in the other.

📬 Submit your measurements

Fill in what you have. Blank fields are fine — a designer will tell you which ones matter for your layout. We typically respond the same business day, and your 3D design and price come back before you commit to anything.