The 8 Best Home Gym Storage Solutions

Do you constantly have to make room in your home gym just to have space to work out? Are the sides of your gym space cluttered with dumbbells and stacked loose plates? Do you ever trip over something when switching between workouts?

Any equipment that gets in the way of your movement during a workout can leave you with a broken ankle or worse (especially when you’re dealing with weights). You might be thinking you have too much stuff in your home gym, but that’s not really the problem. Chances are you paid a lot of money for the equipment you have, and all of it has a purpose in your workout routine. Plus, as soon as you get rid of something, you know you’ll find the perfect use for it.

In reality, you just need a better way to store and organize it all. Storage is an important part of any home gym setup. With specially designed systems to house your equipment, you can easily organize your stuff for quick access and free up more space for working out.

Let’s look at how you can effectively store and organize your home gym equipment with products designed to help you save space and money.

What Equipment Do You Need to Store?

There’s a lot of workout equipment out there. Depending on what kind of workouts you do, you may have different stuff in your home gym. Before you decide what kind of storage solution you need, take inventory of what kind of equipment you have (size, weight, quantity, etc.). The typical home gym setup will include:

• Barbells: No weightlifting setup is complete without a barbell. Standard barbells are 5-7 ft long with a 2” diameter. Since barbells are long narrow pieces of equipment, they can take up either horizontal or vertical space — you decide. As for weight, standard barbells typically weigh about 45 lbs without plates. You’ll need something that’s strong enough to reliably hold them off the ground to keep them from getting scratched. If you only have one barbell, you could store it on a power rack or squat rack when it’s not in use. If you have multiple bars, you’ll want to have something to house them all that will also make it easy to trade them out between lifts.
• Plates: Most weightlifting setups include a set of plates with various weights. 260 lb plate sets are common in many weightlifting setups. These typically have about 8-10 plates in the set, and you’ll need a set of pegs to hold them. Each peg should have at least a 50 lb weight capacity. However, keep in mind the weight capacity of the whole storage structure you choose for your home gym, as it will need to be able to hold the whole set.
• Dumbbells: Dumbbells may not be the most fragile set of equipment, but you’ll need something better than the floor to store them on. For larger sets of free weights, you’ll likely want 2-3 levels of storage to achieve a smaller footprint for your gym floor plan. For a complete set of dumbbells, you’ll need a rack that can hold 300 to 500 lbs. Luckily, most quality dumbbell storage racks are rated for 1000 lbs.
• Kettlebells: Kettlebells are used regularly among CrossFitters and champion weightlifters alike. These large, heavy objects need something sturdy to rest on. Like with dumbbells, two-tier storage is optimal if you have a set. You’ll also want something with a weight capacity of 300-500 lbs so you can hold the entire set. Even if you don’t have a lot of kettlebells right now, you might want to obtain more in the future, so you might want to plan for that with a larger storage solution.
• Other Equipment: For things like jump ropes, yoga mats, sweat bands, safety straps, and other lightweight objects, you’ll need some convenient hooks or simple shelves against the wall. These don’t need to be heavy-duty hooks — just enough to hold about 30 to 50 lbs. You may also want boxes or shelving units for small miscellaneous items such as chalk, weighted balls, ankle weights, mats, etc.

What About DIY Gym Storage?

There’s no shortage of DIY gym storage ideas online, and many of them may seem like good ideas. After all, you’ve likely spent a good amount of money on the equipment itself — why not try to save some money by building your own simple storage solution?

While some of these ideas may be perfect for lightweight objects, your main gym equipment (barbells, plates, and free weights) may not work with these. Let’s take a look at how some of these ideas hold up in reality.

Pegboard and Hooks

These are good for lightweight objects. You could reasonably hang a jump rope, a resistance band, and maybe hang a yoga mat from a pair of hooks if you set them up the right way. But anything heavier than 10-15 lbs is probably going to be too heavy for this solution. Trying to store barbells or plates like this is obviously a recipe for disaster.

Baskets, Boxes, and Totes

You could pile your dumbbells and kettlebells into some kind of bin or container, but this doesn’t allow you to organize them very well. It may get your weights off the floor, but they can still easily get scratched and dented as you dig around in the container to find the one you need. If you don’t have a seriously heavy-duty container, it will quickly collapse under continuous weight stress (on top of basic wear and tear).

A Closet

Storing your weightlifting equipment in a closet isn’t really effective. Most closets are simply another section of a room with a door in front of it. There might be one or two shelves, but they probably aren’t sturdy enough to hold the kind of weight you need for dumbbells or weight plates. You also don’t want to lean your barbells in the corner of a closet like a skateboard — they’ll probably clatter to the ground every time you open the door. Plus, whatever you have to move out of your closet (shoes, coats, etc.) to store your equipment will only take up space somewhere else in your home.

A Cheap Bathroom Storage Rack

While this isn’t a DIY solution, it is certainly cheaper than most storage solutions on the market. You can find a cheap metal shelving unit on Amazon or in a local store for $20 to $30. Why not store your equipment on that instead of a 16-gauge steel rack that costs more money?

Well, there’s a reason these shelving setups are so cheap — they’re only built to hold things like toilet paper, deodorant, and shampoo bottles, not 260 lbs of metal plates or dumbbells. Try to drop a piece of your equipment on it, and you’ll see how quickly the rack breaks into pieces and scatters all over the floor.

Build Your Own Rack

You can try to build your own rack, but with what? Wood may hold up for a while, but it won’t be durable enough to last for years under constant heavy weights. Ask yourself: can you really build a full metal storage rack out of raw materials that’s strong enough to hold dumbbells, barbells, and plates?

To build your own storage solution for gym equipment, you’ll need to sketch the design, find quality metal pieces, welding equipment, and put the thing together with expert craftsmanship. Most people don’t have those skills and don’t want to go through all that trouble.

Then again, if you have the equipment to smith and weld metal shelving in your garage, you’re probably not “most people.” DIY may be a possibility for you — but that doesn't mean it’s always the best solution. Here are 4 reasons why DIY doesn’t compare to buying well-engineered storage solutions from a fitness equipment manufacturer:

• Durability - If you are really good at building, you can get a few years out of a homemade wooden storage rack. But that wood is likely to crack and bow under continuous stress from heavy weight, especially if you just drop your equipment onto your homemade rack at the end of a hard lifting session.
• Time - Building a storage rack to the specifications you need takes a lot of time. You’ll need to measure your equipment, design it, figure out all the materials you need, go shopping for those materials, possibly buy new tools, and then actually put it all together. If you mess up on a cut or put pieces together incorrectly, you’ll probably need to buy another piece of material and do it over again.
• Design - At Synergee, we take time to think through the dimensions and design required to store barbells, plates, and free weights in the most efficient way possible. This requires much more thought than just building a simple shelving unit. To design your own storage solution that performs as well as a manufactured product, you’ll need to think carefully about how to balance structural integrity with space-saving and functionality — often with multiple design iterations. Why try and reinvent the barbell holder or dumbbell rack when someone else has already done it?
• Aesthetics - Unless you are already really good at metal manufacturing, DIY storage solutions probably won’t match the aesthetic of your gym. Almost all lifting equipment is made of metal or rubber, but you’ll likely need to build your own storage racks out of wood. Even if you paint them black, they might look very strange next to your steel barbells and dumbbells.

The Best High-Quality Storage Solutions from Synergee

Synergee products are built to hold and organize heavy weight in an efficient way. We build all of our equipment specifically to work with home gym setups, so you can get the workout equipment you need while still saving money and space in your home.

Our storage solutions are designed to help you customize and maximize your workout space with sturdy, reliable equipment you can trust to last. Here are the best storage solutions we offer for barbells, weight plates, dumbbells, and kettlebells.

Barbell Storage

Synergee Vertical Barbell Wall Storage Racks

This barbell storage rack is designed to help you save as much space as possible and customize your storage layout. By mounting this rack to the wall, you can hang your barbells vertically for easy access without taking up any floor space.

We offer options for 1, 2, and 5-bar storage, depending on your needs. For instance, if you use one size barbell but another person who uses your home gym has a different size, the double-bar version of this rack is the perfect solution.

All of these are made of reliable steel with a black powder coating . Mounting hardware is included, as well as instructions for easy drywall installation.

Synergee Barbell Gun Rack

The simple, wall-mounted construction of this rack allows you to store three barbells horizontally without taking up any floor space. You can also buy a pair of these racks and mount one underneath the other to hold 6 barbells on the wall. It’s a great way to keep bars off the ground and protect them from wear and tear. Plus, each bracket has a protective plastic layer to keep your bars from getting scratched against the steel.

The three-tiered style and 11-gauge, black-coated steel construction makes this rack look incredibly slick when mounted above a bench. If you have multiple barbells, this is a great storage solution for your home gym that also shows off your gear.

Synergee Olympic Weight Plate & Barbell Holder

This storage solution allows you to hold your barbells and weight plates vertically in just 4 square feet of space. We’ve designed it to help you save as much space as possible while still making your equipment accessible for workouts.

This holder is constructed of strong steel and made to hold more than 850 lbs of plates plus two barbells. You can easily store plates on either side of the rack thanks to chrome-coated pegs crafted for smooth sliding.

The rack is 50.5 inches high, allowing you to store three tiers of plates and two vertical barbells easily in a home gym. This puts your main lifting equipment in one organized tower. It’s matte black coating looks great against a wall or next to a power rack.

Plate Storage

Synergee Weight Plate Wall Storage Rack

This rack is made for workout setups featuring a lot of heavy weights. Maybe you also have different sets of plates (such as metal or bumper plates), and you want to organize them on separate racks. If so, this weight plate storage rack is for you.

With four tiers of vertical, wall-mounted plate storage, you can organize up to 1000 lbs of plates (250 lbs per peg) in about 1 square foot of floor space. The rack is just over 6 feet high, meaning you can easily fit this in a home gym space next to a power rack or bench.

This rack is also built to be extremely sturdy. In addition to being made of heavy gauge steel, each peg is angled slightly upward with a plastic stopper to prevent plates from sliding off.

Synergee Weight Plate Storage Pegs

If you only have a small set of weight plates, you may not need a larger storage rack just yet. Instead, you can get one or two of these weight plate storage pegs that can each hold 275 lbs of plates.

Since these pegs are wall-mounted, you don’t have to worry about your plates taking up precious floor space in your home gym. Even if you have a large set of plates, you can buy multiple pegs and arrange them on the wall however you like.

Each black powder-coated steel peg is 8.8” inches long with a 1.9” diameter. Designed for reliable stability, these pegs have a slight upward angle of 2 degrees and plastic stoppers to prevent plates from sliding off unexpectedly. These pegs are available in singles or doubles with mounting hardware included, at a much lower price than the full 4-peg rack.

Free Weight Storage

Synergee Dumbbell Rack (Small)

Even a small set up dumbbells can take up a lot of space, and they can easily get damaged if you store them on the ground. The smaller version of the Synergee dumbbell rack can fit approximately 7 pairs of dumbbells (up to 1000 lbs) in three tiers of storage. Each shelf is set further back from the one below it, making it easy to grab dumbbells from each row.

The shelves are also adjustable from 4.1 to 5.1 inches deep, to accommodate a wide variety of dumbbell sizes and handle lengths. With a fairly small footprint, you can store a ton of free weights in just 5 square feet of space. The best part? The assembly is easy, with fool-proof instructions included.

Synergee Dumbbell Rack (Large)

With an identical construction to the small dumbbell rack, Synergee’s large dumbbell rack offers the same sturdy, adjustable, easy-to-access setup for even more dumbbells. This rack allows you to store and organize about 10 pairs of dumbbells (up to 1000 lbs) on three adjustable shelves.

While this rack is larger, it still only takes up about 6 square feet of space. The matte black finish is also a sleek addition to any home gym setup. If you have a large set of dumbbells you need to store and access with ease, this is the rack for you.

Synergee Kettlebell Storage Rack

Kettlebells are essential for working out several different muscles, and they’re quite common in CrossFit workouts. But they can be kind of awkward to store effectively. With this bench-style storage rack, you can store approximately 12 kettlebells of various weights (up to 1000 lbs total) on two levels.

Each shelf has a rubber anti-slip coating to prevent dumbbells from sliding off, making it easy to deposit one on the rack after a workout. With 3 support legs, this steel bench is built to last a long time under the stress of heavy weights.

Final Thoughts

Clutter can be seriously demotivating, and when it comes to working out at home, we need all the motivation we can get. It can also get in the way of your workout — and chances are your home gym space is tight enough already.

Synergee’s high quality solutions can organize and store your equipment safely for better range of movement and easy access to weight options. This way, your space (and your mind) stays clear.

Synergee provides high quality home gym equipment for an affordable price. Free shipping is also available on orders of $50 or more — so you can get the tools you need to work out without compromising space or your family’s budget.

Browse our storage options to find the perfect equipment to meet your home gym needs.