I have a folly for shoes, but although I love the designs, I never get to wear them (don't work well on building sites!)However, my dream is to find a way to display some lovely shoes in a living room as a 3d piece of art (which some of them are and do cost as much!!) and frankly I prefer to gaze at them and dream then actually wear them and suffer!

I have seen these stairs via various links for a long time now. I think they are great BUT only if they self close. Imagine someone grabbing shoes on their way out late at night then in the night you go downstairs - only one of the stairs is an open drawer 1/2 full of shoes. Is it crash, bang, wallop or are there a couple of extra bangs and crashes to add in there? I think I would add small lights in each drawer that come on when the drawer opens (there are little LED units that are activated by them being moved away from the metal/magnet bit like the burglar alarm sensors you have on doors and windows. Apart from lighting the contents of the drawers it would also alert anyone coming down stairs that they are open. For us though 2 or 3 stair drawers wouldn't be enough. We have a shoe "cabinet" that is from IKEA. It stands about 7 feet tall and has 4 wardrobe doors. Unlike one commenter above who had to cut down wardrobe carcasses to do this here in Malaysia IKEA sells wardrobe carcasses in 3 depths - including the one we have for shoes that is just the right depth. IKEA even have all the slanting shelves etc. (we initially also had some pull out frames with vertically mounted shoe trees to hold your shoes. I don't recommend these. Stick to either shelves or slanted racks) Sadly, 7 feet high by 8 feet wide still isn't really enough. Granted the highest shelf behind 2 doors of the cupboard is reserved for shopping bags/freezer bag etc. but I only use about 1/4 of the now overflowing cupboard and there are only two of us. Any idea why this would be the case anyone? (luckily my wife won't be reading this - I hope!)

Photos of the hall will be helpful, so we can perhaps give you specific ideas. Do you have space for a closed cupboard? Coats look neater on hangers than when they are on hooks. IKEA has some very shallow shoe storage cupboards that you can hang on the wall or place against the wall, and that you can store quite a lot of shoes in. Or perhaps you have space for combined coat rack and bench that will also hold shoes.

it looks lovely, love the brick. Why not look for a Victorian Pine linen cupboard, they tend to be quite shallow so should fit in the recess and you could also paint it in the wall colour if you want it to blend in. you would need a pole/s hung the other way to normal so as to stack the coats front to back (if I'm describing that very well!). Would that be enough storage?? You can probably pick them up on eBay quite cheaply too http://www.oldpaintedfurniture.co.uk/portfolio/victorian-painted-pine-larder-linen-cupboard-545-ref1165/