How to Design Garage Shelves
The shelves inside a garage help to keep your garage organized and neat. There are few styles available to you at your local home improvement store, but the possibilites of customizing are limitless. If you decide to create your own shelves, ensure that you create a design that will be most beneficial to you and your needs.
What You'll Need:
- Home design books
- Home remodeling magazines
- Websites featuring garage systems
- Measuring tools
- Sketch pad and pencil
- Graph paper
- Take some time to review home design and remodeling magazines to study shelving systems. You can also look at websites that feature garage storage systems. Sketch a few of your ideas that seem appealing to you in terms of spacing and shelves, materials and colors used.
- Use measuring tools to measure the space that you will allocate for the garage shelves. You can use a stud finder to locate the framing if you plan to have the shelves secured to the wall. You should plan to store those heavier items on lower shelves. Keep the top shelves for lighter items.
- Don't place your shelves too close to the garage floor in case of any spills or leaks inside the garage. Build the lowest shelf around 12 inches from the floor. Design the shelves so that they will be attached to the wall framing using metal strips that hold the metal support brackets.
- Make a metal or wooden shelf that will protrude from the wall approximately 18 inches. You should plan to construct shelves all along the rear wall and one or more of the side walls of your space. Don't build shelves that are deeper than 18 inches unless you have plenty of floor space in your garage.