The Interior Designer’s guide to vinyl storage
A guide to help interior designers understand what clients really want from vinyl storage. And how it can fit beautifully into your design concepts
When clients say "I collect vinyl" — are you ready?
Here’s an interior design challenge that’s increasingly common: your client is a music lover and has a vinyl record collection. It’s scattered everywhere throughout the house. And garage. Maybe a few hundred albums. Perhaps a thousand. They don’t actually know how many!
They wave at some Ikea Kallax units, odd boxes, milk crates or creaking fixed shelves stuffed with vinyl and say “I need to bring everything together… my partner has had enough!”
Welcome to 2025, a year when the vinyl revival has evolved from hipster trend to mainstream cultural force. It’s creating fascinating opportunities for interior designers who know how to integrate vinyl storage into a design scheme without it looking like a record shop just exploded.
The storage problem that’s now your problem
Record collectors have a storage crisis and, sometime soon, they might be bringing it to your beautifully rendered mood boards.
The issue isn’t just volume, although a serious collection of 1000 records and more is not unusual. It’s the specific, sometimes contradictory requirements:
A large number of records needs to be stored library-style – vertically, end-on, spine-out. It’s the standard approach you find in every home because it’s the most efficient approach. But it FAILS spectacularly! Because it makes browsing and exploring those records mighty frustrating. You can’t easily pick through records that are stacked tightly against each other. And you risk damaging cover spines as you pull your LP out.
Ideally, vinyl lovers want to browse their collection the way they do in record shops – flipping through albums with their fingers, face on, reading covers, discovering forgotten gems. But a record store set-up at home is not practical. Traditional forward-facing storage that you find in a record store devours floor space at an alarming rate. A 1,000-record collection in a single tier configuration requires a minimum four metres of linear space. You might double-tier it, but it can look pug-ugly.
And then here’s the real conundrum. You have to design for an expanding collection. After all, the customer doesn’t want to be in the same situation three years down the line with hundreds more records in those crates!
For designers, this creates multiple headaches; clients whose collections sprawl into bedrooms, garages and spare rooms, their partners begging for the mess to be sorted once and for all and the challenge of creating cohesive interiors when a significant design element (the records) refuse to play nicely with your vision.
In commercial projects – music bars, boutique hotels, contemporary offices, hi-fi stores – the challenge intensifies. You need storage that’s functional, space-efficient, brand-appropriate and often serves as both storage and atmospheric design feature.
There’s a revolutionary solution for this! But first, why it all matters to you…
Your competitive spin
The vinyl market isn’t shrinking. New vinyl record sales in the UK will top seven million, up from 5.7m two years ago. 420,000 people bought a new album last year. Add in the collectors buying secondhand and vinyl is truly thriving.
True collectors are likely to be slightly older and wealthier – precisely the demographic investing in high-quality interior design. In addition, new record shops are opening, as well as music-themed bars and cafés. Hotels are creating vinyl libraries as experiential amenities.
For residential designers, vinyl storage has become a legitimate design requirement alongside wine storage, libraries or home cinemas. For commercial designers, it’s increasingly part of the brief – especially in hospitality, retail and creative office environments.
Here’s your opportunity… most designers are still specifying generic shelving units or standard approach custom joinery that doesn’t truly solve the problem.
Master vinyl storage and you differentiate yourself. You become the designer who ‘gets it’ – who can walk clients through a specialised solution rather than offering compromises.
Now for revolution! The vinyl storage solution everyone’s been waiting for
LongPlayer’s Chorus vinyl storage system represents the first genuine innovation in record storage functionality.
The breakthrough is deceptively simple… an extending shelf mechanism that allows records to be stored library-style (end-on, spine-out, space-efficient) but transforms for browsing. Pull the shelf forward and suddenly you can flip through your collection exactly like you would in a record shop. Push it back and you’re back to clean, efficient storage.
This is world-first technology – no other vinyl storage system globally offers this functionality. It fundamentally changes the user experience while solving your design challenges simultaneously. And just in case you’re wondering why it’s never been done before… that deceptively simple idea presents a major visual design challenge. It’s technically very easy to solve but the designs would look clunky as hell. Making it visually appealing yet capable of bearing serious load safely? Think two years of development, prototyping and customer testing.
For you as a designer, LongPlayer Chorus means:
Space efficiency meets functionality: Your clients get both condensed storage footprint AND the browsing experience they crave. No more choosing between usability and square footage.
Scalability that actually works: Chorus is modular system furniture. Start with 500 records, expand to 3,000 as the collection grows without replacing the entire installation or compromising your original design intent. Units configure horizontally or vertically and can be specified to meet future capacity requirements. Empty shelf apertures to accommodate an expanding collection can be specified as display units or cupboards and then converted to extending shelves later on.
Integration, not compromise: Multiple finish options, custom dimensions and the system furniture approach means vinyl storage becomes part of your design language, rather than something you’re designing around. This works in a Cotswolds manor library, a Shoreditch loft or a hotel’s vinyl listening lounge with equal facility.
Structural confidence: Purpose-engineered for record weight with proper load distribution. No more nervous calculations about floor loads or shelf deflection over time. LongPlayer include white-glove installation as a matter of course to ensure perfect anchoring, alignment and operation.
The conversation closer: When clients worry about their vinyl taking over, you can demonstrate a solution that's actually revolutionary rather than just ‘nice shelving’. That extending shelf mechanism becomes your visual proof that you've specified genuine innovation. And it will be a wow moment for your client.
Positioning it for your clients
Here’s your pitch framework: “Your collection deserves storage that matches your commitment to it – and that works with our design vision rather than against it”.
For residential clients, emphasise the transformation from scattered chaos to cohesive library. Show them how Chorus contains and elevates their collection while preserving the tactile joy of vinyl ownership. The extending shelf feature resonates powerfully – it demonstrates you understand why they collect in the first place.
For commercial clients – whether boutique hotels creating listening experiences, music bars requiring functional display storage or offices wanting cultural credibility - with easy customer- or employee-accessibility - you can position it as atmospheric infrastructure. Chorus handles the practical realities while contributing to brand identity.
The premium positioning is your friend here. LongPlayer sits at the bespoke end of the market, reflecting component costs (that shelf mechanism isn’t simple) and exceptional build quality. This aligns perfectly with clients who’ve invested significantly in their vinyl or businesses creating experiential environments.
Why this belongs in your specification library
Vinyl isn’t disappearing. If anything, as collections mature and age into higher disposable income, the demand for sophisticated storage intensifies.
Having a genuine solution – not a workaround or a compromise but an actual innovation specifically engineered for this purpose – positions you as the designer who stays ahead of client needs. It’s the difference between ‘we can probably fit some shelving’ and ‘I know exactly how to handle this’.
Browse this site to explore configurations, finishes and technical specifications. Because the next time a client mentions their vinyl collection, you’ll already know the answer.
For the record…
You should measure a standard album as:
One vinyl record, a paper inner sleeve and a cardboard cover
Size 313 x 313mm
4mm spine
It weighs 250gm, comprising a 160gm vinyl record, plus a cardboard cover and inner sleeve weighing about 90gm. So that’s 25kg per 40cm of shelf space
Maximum number of standard albums in any vertical stack: 80
Of course, no one’s collection is any in way standard! Read more about weights and measures