Shortly after college I moved to Chicago where I lived in a tiny (tiny!) room with no closet. I was lucky that my landlord sent me to The Container Store where I shopped for a storage system. They purchased what I chose and had it installed in the room's recessed nook. The room was tall and light, so I headed to IKEA where I purchased curtains that matched the wall color and would hang to the floor. It was the perfect solution: the curtains easily hid my wardrobe, kept the room airy and didn't take up any space.
So, in celebration of Small Spaces Month, here are 10 fan-tas-tic curtained closets:
TOP ROW
1 via Apartment Therapy
2 via This is Glamorous
3 via Apartment Therapy
4 via Crafty Cook-Ups
5 via Young House Love
BOTTOM ROW
6 via Wild World
7 via In Honor of Design
8 via Young House Love
9 via ermoumag
10 via I Heart Organizing
(Images: as linked)
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Beatriz's Fun & Functional Workspace
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Sheex Bedding
How to Make Easy 3-Ingredient Energy Bars at Home
How to Make Fresh Pasta Dough in the Food Processor
We're buying a house with itty-bitty closets. Said closets are missing their 1940's doors. Thanks for the perfectly-timed inspiration!!
When my fiance and I moved into our current apartment, we were excited to have a washer/dryer, but we were not excited about the unsightly laundry nook. Curtains to the rescue! We used a tension-type shower rod because we couldn't install any hardware in the apartment, plus we can take it with us when we move.
My grandparents' house has never had traditional closets built into any of the bedrooms (the old part of the house was built around 1800, and the new part built around 1860). The solution a great-grandparent came up with was to fit in a "closet" on one side of the fireplace in each room. Shelving and a rod were built into the space created between the fireplace and the wall, and then beautiful full-length floral curtains were hung up over this. When I was a kid, it was just a part of how things were, and I didn't think about it much. Now I'm appreciative and find it to be a very good, instinctively feng shui, solution. The now-vintage curtains have a softening effect on the rooms and allow for a free flow of energy that cannot be achieved with a built-in closet set behind doors.
I've been curtaining closet doors since my first apartment and I'll never go back to doors. Not only to they give you full access to the closet behind, they look way better!
What's great is that you can change the curtains easily and get a different look without much effort!
Really you chose that image from Young House Love? Why not the gorgeous way they created his and hers closets in their old master bedroom.