Plenty of flats in Nairobi have one large room where the sofa, the dining table and sometimes the bed all share the same floor. What people want is usually the same: two places instead of one, without building a wall.
A shelf can do that, and hold things while it does. This post is about that kind of divider, one that is also storage. It is not a folding screen. A screen costs less and folds away when you want the room back, and if that is what you need, a shelf is the wrong buy.
What does a divider have to do?
Mostly one of two things. In a bedsitter or a studio, it separates the bed from the sitting area, so the bed is not the first thing a visitor sees. In a larger flat, it marks where the dining table ends and the sitting room begins.
Either way, it has to stand in the open, look right from both sides, and not make the room darker.
Why open shelves, and not a wall?
Our units have no back panel, so a divider works from both sides. Books can face the sofa while a fruit bowl faces the table, on the same shelf.
Light passes through the gaps, so a room with one window stays lit on both sides of the line. The divider screens as much as you put on it. Filled with books and baskets, it hides most of what is behind it. Left sparse, it only marks where one room ends.
There is also nothing to build. A gypsum partition is the landlord's to allow, and it stays when you leave. A shelf stands on the floor, nothing is drilled into the wall, and it comes apart when you move.
How tall should it be?
Height decides whether the room still feels like one room.
- Low, behind a sofa. The Low Console, 98 cm wide and 72 cm tall, Ksh 12,000. It gives the back of the sofa a surface for a lamp and a place for books, and it stops the sitting area running into the rest of the room.
- One unit, at the foot of a bed. The Quadruple, 98 cm wide and just over a metre tall, Ksh 17,500. In a small room, one unit is often enough of a line.
- Chest height, across the room. The Double Bay, 1.99 m wide and 1.33 m tall, Ksh 46,000. Standing, you see over it, so the room stays open. Seated, your eyes are below its top, so once the shelves are full it screens most of the other side.
- A longer run. The Triple Bay, the same height and 3.00 m wide, Ksh 69,000, for a wider room.
The tiers are about 30 cm apart, which suits books and baskets. Taller shelves screen more, which matters most when the bed is on the other side, and that brings us to the next part.
A tall shelf standing free is a conversation first
Against a wall, a shelf has the wall behind it. Standing free in a room, it does not, and it can be reached from both sides.
A low divider is the simple choice. The Low Console behind a sofa is the one we would point to first. For anything taller than the Low Console that will stand free in a room, kindly talk to us before you order, so we can say what we would do in that room.
One unit or several
Our shelves are modular, which means they are made of separate parts that stack together. A divider can be one unit, or several side by side, and the same units stack against a wall in the next flat.
Every design has a page that stands it in your room at full size through your phone's camera, the easiest way to see how much floor a divider takes: The Low Console, The Quadruple, The Double Bay and The Triple Bay.
We make every unit at our workshop in Dagoretti Corner and deliver within Nairobi, assembled, within a week of payment. Delivery is charged by area, and we tell you the fee before you pay.
If the room being divided is a bedsitter, how to arrange a bedsitter covers the rest of it. Our other designs are on the shelving page, each with its price, or you can put your own together in the builder.