Today, one of the most important features of a house is the size of the master bedroom suite. People want bigger and brighter spaces. As the size of the bedroom increases so does the size of the closet. However, having a large walk – in closet does not mean that it’s functional. The space often has to be modified by the buyer in order to suit his needs.

How so? The closet components provided by most home builders-a single rod that’s 5-feet, 8-inches off the floor with a single shelf above- are “a great setup if you have a lot of ball gowns” but ill-suited to the clothing that most people own these days, explained Bethesda, Maryland interior designer Skip Sroka. Today, he pointed out, most people wear separates-suits to work and casual wear in their off hours. Because the separates do not require as much hanging space as dresses, you can have two rods, one on top of the other and hang twice as many garments per linear foot of closet. This in turn frees up space to install shelving for the t-shirts, t-necks, sweaters, and sweats that are more easily stored on shelves than on hangers. If you do have a few dresses or hang pants by the cuff instead of folding them over a hanger, you can include a small section with a rod at the traditional height.

Who do you engage to help you figure out what’s an appropriate mix of rods and shelves for your closet? A closet designer. Designers know more about the minutiae of closet design and storage than anyone, and many residential architects routinely turn over closet details to them once the overall dimensions of the closet have been determined. A closet designer generally sells the products of a single closet system manufacturer. California Closets ( http://www.californiaclosets.com/ ) is the most well known one, but there are a number of others including Closet Maids ( http://www.closetmaid.com/ ), Closet Classics ( http://www.closetclassics.com/ ) and Schulte (www.schultestorage.com). To find a closet designer in your area, check “closets” in the yellow pages or on the Internet. Most closet designers provide an on-site consultation, a design proposal, and a price estimate at no charge. Inviting several to advise you will give you more ideas because they won’t all propose the same thing. You will also get a range of prices.

I invited four designers, each selling one of the four systems mentioned above, to come to my own house and make a proposal for 16 linear feet of closet in the master bedroom. The prices ranged from $520 to $1,300, depending on whether the entire system was made with metal rods and vinyl-coated wire shelving or with a combination of metal rods and solid particle board shelving finished in melamine (similar to plastic laminate counter material but not as durable). The least costly $520 option was a metal rod and vinyl-coated wire system with non-adjustable shelves. A wire system with adjustable shelving added $300.

The four closet systems with rods and solid particle board shelving ranged in price from $620 to $1,300 for what appears to be a basically similar product. Each one featured metal rods and metal shelf pins, which are stronger and more durable than the plastic ones used by some closet system manufacturers. One used plastic hangers to support the rod, which some do not consider as strong as the metal rod holders the others used. The warranties did not necessarily correlate with price, and ranged from a ten-year limited warranty to a lifetime transferable warranty (the warranty transfers to subsequent owners of your house). Of the four, only California Closets has the Good Housekeeping Magazine Seal, which means that if their product fails within two years of purchase, Good Housekeeping will reimburse the consumer.

Besides price, one advantage of the wire systems is that they allow air to circulate around the clothes. This can be a plus in very humid climates where clothes can get musty, though in most new houses the closet area would be air conditioned. On the downside, however, the wire shelves allow more dust to settle on garments and many homeowners have complained that the clothes stored directly on the wires get “wire marks.” These usually disappear after you wear the garment for an hour or so, but you may need to look presentable ten minutes after you get dressed. Silver Spring, Maryland, interior designer Deborah Wiener also noted that the wire systems that have slots to hold hangers instead of a rod are impractical for children because they can’t get hangers into the slots very easily.

Some home builders, including some divisions of Toll Brothers, Centex and Pulte, firms that build all over the country, offer an integrated closet system with rods and shelving either as standard or as an upgrade. Generally these firms offer only one or two closet configurations for each standard floor plan, but because most systems are designed with interchangeable parts, you can work with a closet designer to reconfigure the system to suit your particular needs after you move in. The main advantage of having your builder provide it initially is that the cost can be rolled into your mortgage.

In addition to the rods and shelves, you can incorporate drawers into the system to hold smaller items such as socks, jewelry, and underwear and dispense with a dresser altogether. Or, you can put your dresser in the walk-in and design a system

Once you have arranged your belongings in your reconfigured closet, the benefits will be immediately apparent, Wiener said. You can see all your clothes easily, and you won’t spend time hunting for a pair of pants or a skirt that is squished between two jackets. And, she added, because your clothes are not jammed together, they are less likely to get wrinkled.

Some people, however, need help in figuring out where to put their clothes amongst the rods and shelves, once the system in installed, Wiener said. She suggested they bring in a “space organizer.” Nearly every city and town has several with names like Amazing Spaces, Organize This!, and Getting It Together. To find one in your area, check “organizing services” in the yellow pages or on the Internet.

If your walk-in closet area is really big-you need at least a nine by nine-foot size (but 10 by 10-feet is better) you can put the rods and shelves on all four sides and a bench in the center, and use the closet as a dressing area. This is a real convenience if you need to get dressed for work while your partner is still sleeping. The bench, which can have additional drawers below, may seem an unnecessary indulgence, but most people sit-usually on the bed-at some point during their morning toilette to put on shoes and socks or hosiery.

Not all walk-ins are outsized, however, and you may find that even after ruthless purging of your wardrobe prior to moving, you still need more closet storage. One solution, which Sroka recommended, is to add additional closets along an entire wall in the bedroom area. You’re not really losing much, he says, because the master bedroom area in new houses is often much larger than required for a sleeping space. And, he adds, if you use French doors with mirrors instead of glass, “you have an elegant solution which makes the room feel bigger than it did before you built the closets.”

If there’s no room in your closets for your bedding, blankets, and off-season comforter, Wiener suggested getting a trunk that runs the full width of your bed, and putting them in there. Stores such as Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn carry trunks. But she said, the added cost of getting a custom-made trunk is worth it because you can get more storage capacity while sizing it to look right with the height of your bed. If you get a cushioned, upholstered top, you can also use the trunk as a seat.

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How do you resolve your other storage needs in your new house? The basement or the garage is great for things that you don’t need very often. But where to put those things you use frequently and want close at hand?

Most new houses do not have wall niches, nooks and crannies, generous stair landings or that proverbial “space under the stairs.” New houses tend to have neatly squared off rooms. The only way to garner space to store the things you want close by is to steal it.

For example, you can commandeer 12 to 15 inches off one end of your dining room and build a closet to house all that fancy china that you got as wedding presents or inherited from your Great Aunt Nancy and use on special occasions. You may have gotten Aunt Nancy’s sideboard along with her china, but often those do not hold much, and building a closet to take up the slack is a very affordable solution, said Silver Spring, Maryland, interior designer Deborah Wiener. Closets cost less than built-in cabinetry, and they can be built by a handyman who is accustomed to framing and drywalling. Another plus with the closets-they’re also a handy place to store extra leaves for your dining table and the folding chairs you bring out when you have an overflow crowd. To make the closets blend in with the décor, Wiener uses wood doors and stains them to match the dining furniture. If a client wants something with more character, she refinishes old doors that she gets from shops that sell salvaged materials from old buildings.

Books are another item that most owners do not want to consign to the basement or garage, though Bethesda, Maryland, interior designer Sroka said that most people do not have as many as they think or need as much storage as they image. “Clients say, ‘We need an entire wall of books,’ but they have only a third as many books as they think they have. When calculating shelving requirements for books, I always calculate 1-1/2-inch for each book thickness and add 20% for future book purchases. I also tell my clients, ‘when you buy books, purge books.’”

When deciding where to put your books, Sroka said a foot of floor space given over to bookcases does not have much impact on the overall utility of most rooms, while aesthetically books enhance almost any space. His own books line one wall of his dining room where, he said, “they add a great touch.” His favorite place to read and relax, however, is the bathtub. He has bookshelves lining an area with a large soaking tub, but far enough from the water that the books don’t get wet. In his childless household, this arrangement works fine, but he acknowledged that it would be a disaster in a house with small kids.