Wilton Manors, FL custom closets and home organization

Wilton Manors is known as the Island City because the North and South Forks of the Middle River wrap around it. Before it had that name, the area was known as Colohatchee, after a Florida East Coast Railroad stop. Ned Willingham, a land developer from Georgia, named it Wilton Manors in 1925. It incorporated as a village in 1947 and became a city in 1953. It also surrounds the separate village of Lazy Lake. Since the late 1990s, Wilton Drive has been redeveloped into an arts and entertainment district.

Most of the housing went up in the decades after World War II. The typical home here dates from 1971, according to Census Bureau estimates; about a quarter of homes were built in the 1950s, and nearly half date from before 1970. A little under half are detached houses. At the 2020 census, the city had 11,426 residents with a median age of 53.9, and 46% of households were one person living alone.

Mid-century houses tend to have modest closets, often a single reach-in in each bedroom. A reach-in closet system makes the most of that space with double-hang rods, a drawer stack inside the closet and shelving that uses the full height of the wall. Where a bedroom has hardly any closet at all, a wall of closet systems can add hanging space, shoe shelves and drawers along one side of the room, like the one pictured at the top of this page.

With so many one-person households, the second bedroom often becomes an office, a guest room and a storage room at once. A Murphy bed folds into a cabinet when nobody is staying over, which leaves the floor free for a desk. Home office cabinetry around it adds file drawers, shelving and a work surface sized to the room.

If you're renovating an older house, it's easier to plan the closets at the same time as the rest of the work. That way the closet openings, lighting and outlets can be planned around the new storage. You can choose door styles, finishes and hardware at home; our colors and styles page shows the range before the designer arrives with samples.

Some Wilton Manors homes have a garage or a utility room. Wall-mounted cabinets, slatwall and overhead racks from our garage storage systems give tools, bikes and hurricane-season supplies a place off the floor. Garage doors in Broward are built to the Florida Building Code's High-Velocity Hurricane Zone rules, so any overhead rack is laid out to miss the door's tracks and opener.

For condos and townhouses, ask your association about work hours, elevator use and installer parking before you schedule. If your building has a front desk, let them know when the designer is coming.

Neighbors in Oakland Park and Fort Lauderdale work with the same design team, and our page on custom closets in Fort Lauderdale covers walk-ins and reach-ins in more detail. To begin, request a free design consultation.