Bespoke Under Stairs Storage in Burton upon Trent

Burton upon Trent's traditional terraced and semi-detached houses share a common problem beneath the stairs: a shallow door, a single shelf and a lot of unused depth toward the tall end of the cavity. A modern renovation elsewhere in the house often draws attention to how little the original cupboard is doing, which is usually when we are asked to survey the space properly and design something that uses it in full.

Open-plan living is increasingly common across the town's renovated family homes, where a kitchen and dining area now run into the hallway rather than being separated by a door. In that layout, the under-stairs cupboard is on view far more than it used to be, so we design the run with the same attention to proportion and finish as the rest of the open space, rather than treating it as a hidden utility area.

Bedroom storage pressure is a recurring theme in family houses where a growing household has outgrown the original wardrobes, and a well-planned run of drawers or a shallow cupboard under the stairs can take some of that load without any building work. We look at this alongside the ground-floor storage during the same visit, since the two are often solved most efficiently together.

A home office corner is another frequent request, particularly in houses without a spare room to convert, and a shelf and drawer arrangement fitted into the taller part of the cavity can hold files and everyday desk items. We keep claims about what will fit restrained until the actual dimensions are known, since even a modest difference in stair pitch changes how much usable space is really there.

The cabinetry is made in our Derbyshire workshop from a site template and fitted by the same team that designed it, so awkward spaces and minor variations in the wall or floor are dealt with by people who understand the original drawing. A number of the houses we visit around Burton upon Trent have already had one round of renovation, whether that is a new kitchen, a loft conversion or a rewired hallway, and the under-stairs cupboard is very often the one area left untouched throughout. Bringing it up to the same standard as the rest of the work usually means starting from a fresh survey rather than adapting whatever was fitted originally, since the existing cupboard rarely reveals the true shape of the cavity behind its door.