Garage cabinets, where the wall is the real question

Establish what the wall is made of before choosing anything

Garage walls are not one thing. Timber studs behind drywall, bare studs, poured concrete and block all take fixings differently and carry different loads. It decides whether wall-hung cabinetry is available to you at all, and which fixings the manufacturer requires.

Watch for: Cabinets hung on drywall anchors alone. A garage cabinet loaded with tools and paint is far heavier than a kitchen one, and the failure mode is the run coming down onto whatever is parked below.

Choose wall-hung, floor-standing or both, deliberately

Wall-hung keeps the slab clear, which makes sweeping and any water event trivial. Floor-standing carries far more weight without asking anything of the wall. Most garages want both — hung above, standing below.

Watch for: Hanging everything because it looks tidier. Weight constrains a wall and does not constrain the floor, so heavy items belong low.

Match the material to an unconditioned room

Powder-coated steel tolerates temperature swings and wipes clean, and rusts where the coating is broken. Melamine-faced board is cheap and stable in a dry garage but swells irreversibly if the edge takes water. Sealed-edge plywood is the most forgiving of a damp floor.

Watch for: Melamine or particleboard resting on the slab. Concrete moves moisture upward continuously, and a bare bottom edge swells from underneath where nobody looks.

Set out against the car, with the doors open

The measurement that matters is not the garage width but what remains once a vehicle is parked and its doors are open. Wall cabinets at the wrong height are exactly where a door edge or a wing mirror arrives. Mark the parked position on the floor and work from it.

Watch for: Cabinet depth chosen without checking against a parked car. Deep base cabinets down one wall are why two-car garages stop holding two cars.

Deal with the floor, which is neither flat nor dry

Garage slabs are laid to fall toward the door, so a floor-standing run is not on a level surface and needs levelling feet or a levelled plinth. Feet also lift the carcase clear of standing water and let you sweep underneath.

Watch for: A run scribed to the slope and fixed hard down. It looks fine until something spills and nothing can get underneath.

Plan for what is being stored, not for a photograph

Chemicals and sharp tools argue for lockable doors, long items need a tall bay, and a worktop wants power near it. Listing these before the layout is drawn is the difference between storage that gets used and storage that becomes another surface.

Watch for: Fuel, solvents and pressurised cylinders stored in an enclosed cabinet near an ignition source such as a boiler or a water heater. Follow the product's own storage instructions and your local fire regulations rather than a cabinet layout.