Pimlico Under Stairs Storage London

The Pimlico is the hallway brief: the under-stair cupboard that the whole house walks past, so it is designed to be looked at as well as opened. Four tall doors and a bank of four drawers stand at the high end of the void, and the doors step down the stair line from there, each one cut to the tread above it, so there is no filler triangle at the low end and nothing is boarded over.

The finish is a soft sage green in a matt lacquer with brass knobs, which suits a period hallway with a black balustrade as well as a new-build one. A bookshelf is recessed into the door line at eye level and lined in oak, and a smaller open niche at the low end takes the things that never quite have a home: keys, a bowl, the post.

How it works: each door hangs on its own carcass, so the drawers, the cupboards and the niches are separate boxes fixed to the wall and to each other rather than one long cabinet with dividers. The stepped doors are cut to the underside of the stair on the CNC from the survey, with a 10mm shadow gap to the stringer so the staircase is never touched. The drawer bank runs on full-extension soft-close runners; the doors on concealed soft-close hinges.

The plinth is recessed and carries an LED strip on a sensor, so the run floats a little off the floor and lights the hallway at night without a switch.

Designed for a hallway that is seen every day

Under-stair storage in a hallway does two jobs: it takes the coats, the shoes and the hoover, and it is the first piece of furniture a visitor sees. The Pimlico gives the display to the eye-level bookshelf and the niche, and hides everything else behind doors the same colour as the wall, so the hallway reads as calm rather than as storage.

• Four full-height doors and a four-drawer bank at the tall end
• Doors stepped to the stair line, cut to the tread above each one
• Recessed bookshelf lined in oak, with a lit back
• Open niche at the low end for keys and post
• Sage green matt lacquer with brass knobs
• Full-extension soft-close drawers, concealed soft-close hinges
• Recessed plinth with sensor-lit LED
• Shadow gap to the stringer; the staircase is untouched

Designed for the room: the drawer bank can move to the low end for shoes, the bookshelf can become a coat niche with a rail, and the doors can be push-to-open where a knob would be too low to reach. The finish is chosen from our painted colours and the knobs from brass, black or nickel.

Built for everyday use: the drawers carry the daily things at hand height, the low cupboards take the hoover and the boots, and every front is a wipe-clean lacquer that shrugs off school bags and dog leads. A solid 18mm back on every carcass keeps the run square against a wall that rarely is.

The Pimlico shown fills a straight-run staircase about 2.8 metres long with 2.1 metres of standing height at the tall end; the same pieces are drawn to your staircase, your wall and your floor at the design visit.

Manufactured in our Wembley workshop

Your under-stair cabinet is cut in our HA9 Wembley factory from the survey of your staircase. The stair pitch, the stringer depth, the tread positions and the floor level are recorded at the visit, and each stepped door is cut to its own triangle on the CNC, edge-banded on every visible edge and lacquered in the workshop before it is hung.

The carcasses are assembled and the drawers fitted before the run leaves the factory, so installation is a matter of fixing, scribing and adjusting rather than building on site.

Quality you can rely on: your Metro fitted furniture comes with a 10-year guarantee covering parts and labour.