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It’s the start of a new year, and I find myself looking to reorganize EVERYTHING. The art studio is no different, and today I want to share with you some great organizing tips for your studio or craft room.

How do I organize my art studio?

The best way to organize your art studio is to lay out all the tools you use currently and begin to assess your storage needs. I personally change materials frequently, but am currently working the most with watercolors, gouache, acrylics, colored pencils, and neocolors.

What should be included in an art studio?

I love to make colorful watercolor swatches of all my paints and write the names on the back. I’ve been keeping them in this amazing drawer system that I’ve used for tons of different things in the two months I’ve had it. The size of these drawers are perfect for pencils, markers, washi tape, watercolor tubes, glues, and more. I love that they can stack securely to hold lots of supplies, and that I can easily rearrange them depending on my needs. They also work beautifully for pantry or make up storage. I even put all my wrapping supplies into it over the holidays to keep my tape, scissors, tags, pens and twine organized.

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In the pantry

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How much does it cost to build an art studio?

It really depends on your space, but I have another post coming with different art studio set ups I’ve had in the past – everything from inside a closet to a completely custom studio space that we are wrapping up building right now. I’ve been slow and intentional with my decisions which has been a really good thing in the long run. But honestly, it doesn’t take much to have a workspace. A desk with a few drawers, and a comfy chair is what most artists I know use the most.

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How do I organize my creative space?

If you have the space for it, I like to create areas for my different needs. I do a lot of work in surface design, painting, crafting, and sewing so I took all those things into account. When I was working from closet office #2 space was very tight and it was a temporary set up so I boxed up everything except for my painting and surface design tools and books, and put it into storage.

This is the filming space we created along the back wall of my painting room.

That way, I had space for the things I knew I would be using the most. I knew I’d need lots of small drawers so I had a desk custom built with shallow wide drawers, but I love having the option to move my supplies around on my desktop as well with the little drawers mentioned above.

One of the things I love most about this drawer style is that they pull all the way out from their frames so I can take them from place to place depending on where I’m working.

The size of these drawers is perfect to store acrylics, gouache, pencils, watercolors, crayons, neocolors, crayola supertips (if you’ve been around here long you know those are my favorite kid markers), glues, etc.

Another bonus is the little lip on top of the drawers to keep things from sliding off the top. The lip also helps the drawers stack securely so they aren’t sliding around when you’re opening them.

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What is the best color for an art studio?

There are a lot of different options, but for my studio I chose Pure White by Sherwin Williams. I had the chance to check it out at my friend Lizzyography’s photography studio and fell in love with it. It’s the perfect white for me, not yellow, not pink, not blue. Just white. You can see it well here in my post on Camera mounts, and my ceiling is painted the same white as my walls. Several years ago we discovered Sherwin Williams Emerald paint and I’ve never looked back. It washes off well, and touches up without the dreaded sheen changes that you find with other paints. A++ from me. The coverage is superb as well.

How do I organize my art?

I like to use these archival boxes from Blick to keep my favorite original paintings safe. They are museum quality, with metal corners on the sides (no adhesives), and a convenient drop front on the long end to carefully sort through work.

I also have several plastic snap top folders from the dollar store that I keep each project and reference in while I’m working on projects. This keeps everything together and fairly safe from splatters and spills. I like that they are clear and I can see what’s in them easily. Obviously they aren’t the best quality, but you can’t beat the price of 4 for a dollar.

Want to see more progress shots of the studio in action? Be sure to follow along on Instagram and Facebook, and Pinterest!