German House Tour – Dream Closet with IKEA PAX

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We have officially moved into our house and are finally settling in (see our international house hunting experience here). I wanted to share some pictures from one of my favorite rooms of the house – our closet. My dream closet. German houses typically don’t have built in closets, and instead they store their clothes in armoires or standing wardrobes. The military is lending us three wardrobes during our stint in Germany, but let’s be honest, I have way too many clothes for an armoire.

We are lucky enough to have a spare room, which we turned into our closet. We decided that since we had the tiniest closets in Atlanta, we would spoil ourselves with the opposite this time around. I talked about how amazing IKEA in Germany is in this post, but I’ll say it again – IKEA is the best. We decided on the IKEA PAX wardrobe system because it’s essentially a DIY for custom closets.

IKEA PAX Wardrobes

There is an easy to use PAX Planner – click here for US and here for German planners – which is what we used to decide what we wanted our closets to look like. You have to enable Adobe Flash to use the planner, but it basically helps you personalize your closet easily and visually. Once you’re done, you can save down a PDF that lists out each component of your dream closet that you can purchase either online or in store.

The best part about the IKEA PAX system however, is how easy it is to install and put your closet together, but more importantly how easy it is to make changes. I knew I wanted a clothing rack to hang shirts and sweaters, and below it I wanted to add a pull out pants hanger. The PAX Planner showed me I had enough room for a shelf, but it didn’t look like I had enough room for a full drawer. The PAX Planner didn’t take into account that I’m super short, so my pants and my shirts are both short. Once I hung up my clothes, I saw that I actually had enough room for a shelf, a tray, and a drawer, so I was able to easily rearrange and add those to my closet. And I love how it turned out!

Komplement – Interior Details

The first thing you have to build when creating your dream closet with IKEA are the exterior frames. That is the only challenging part of the whole closet. Then you get to fit the interior with IKEA Komplement components -clothing racks, shelves, drawers, shoe shelves, etc. My favorite Komplement pieces are the glass shelf, the pull out tray, and the glass drawer. These organize and showcase my purses and jewelry, and make it easy to pick out my accessories.

I also love that Komplement has two different tyles of shoe racks – a pull out shelf with a shoe carrier (metal bars for heels) and a pull out extendable rack. I have two shelves with the metal bars for booties and pumps. The rest of my shoes are on the extendable rack, which has two levels for my shoes.

I also love this hanger holder that I put on the end of my closet. It’s perfect for hanging clothes that need to be steamed, and it’s great for just planning out my outfit of the day.

Vanity set – Makeup and Hair

On the opposite side of my closet is my vanity, where I do my hair and makeup. Vanity sets are actually kind of pricey and usually don’t have the kind of shelving and mirror that I like. Instead of buying a set, I ended up buying a small desk from IKEA, this adjustable mirror, and used a chair I already had. I also bought this multi-level shelf on wheels that I found in the kitchen section of IKEA. I use it to hold my curling iron, hair supplies, and other miscellaneous beauty products like nail polish and face masks.

A few helpful notes about the PAX wardrobes:
– If you can, opt out of doors – they’re expensive!
– Make a note of what size frame(s) you have. That will determine what size Komplement items you get (I have two large frames, one medium, and one small).
– Measure how tall your walls/ceilings are. That will save you a headache when putting together your frames.
– The PAX Planner will give you “templates” for your closet, but you can just add in a template and then delete everything to start from scratch.

We still plan on adding a rug, and maybe a cute bench, but so far I love how quickly and easily our closet came together!