· by Michael Blair, Nashville's Closets
It comes up when a house is going on the market, when an office is being turned back into a guest room, or when a buyer’s agent points out that the fourth bedroom has nowhere to hang a coat. The answer depends on who is asking. The building code has one set of rules for a room people sleep in; appraisers, listing services and buyers have their own expectations, and the two do not match. Knowing which is which tells you whether a closet is required, merely expected or not needed at all.
What the building code looks at
The residential code that Metro Nashville and most Tennessee counties build from does not require a closet for a room to be a sleeping room. What it cares about is getting out and living safely: an emergency escape opening, meaning a window or door big enough and low enough to climb through; minimum floor area and room width; ceiling height; heat; light and ventilation; and smoke alarms. A room that meets those is a legal sleeping room with or without a closet.
Local amendments exist, and a basement room gets a harder look at its escape opening than an upstairs one does. For a particular room, the codes office for that city or county is the authority, whether that is Metro Codes in Davidson County or the building department in Franklin, Murfreesboro, Lebanon or Gallatin.
What buyers and appraisers look at
Whether a room is counted as a bedroom on a listing or an appraisal is a separate matter, and it is convention rather than law. Many agents and appraisers expect a closet, and a room without one may be listed as a bonus room, office or den instead. That can change how a house is marketed and valued, since bedroom count is one of the first filters a buyer sets.
Practice is not uniform, and it has loosened as wardrobes and dressing rooms have come back into fashion. If a sale is the reason for asking, the listing agent and, where one is involved, the appraiser are the people whose view counts. Ask them before anything gets framed.
Adding a closet to an existing room
The simplest closet is a framed box in a corner or along one wall, drywalled, with a door, a rod and a shelf. It takes floor space from the room, and that is the first thing to check: the room still has to meet the minimum size once the closet is in, and the closet cannot block the escape window or the path to it. In a small bedroom in an older Inglewood or East Nashville house, that often decides which wall it goes on.
Hanging clothes need about two feet of depth; any shallower and the hangers hit the back wall. Framing a new interior wall, adding a light or moving an outlet can need a permit, and the rules differ between Metro and the surrounding counties, so a call to the codes office before the lumber arrives is worth making. Wiring a closet light is a licensed electrician’s job either way.
- The room still meets the minimum size after the closet is built
- The escape window, and the path to it, left clear
- About two feet of depth for clothes on hangers
- A door swing that clears the bed and the closet’s own contents
- The permit question asked before framing, not after
When a closet is not the answer
Some rooms have no wall that can give up two feet. A fitted wardrobe, built in or freestanding, gives similar storage without framing anything and comes out if the room changes use. Under a sloped ceiling, a knee-wall cabinet or a low run of drawers uses space a standard closet cannot reach.
And some rooms are better left alone. An office that will stay an office does not need a closet nobody will open, and giving up a strip of its floor for a resale the owners may never make is a poor trade. Build the closet when the room will actually be slept in, or when a sale makes the case for it.