Reader Question: Brightly Colored Bankers Boxes?

I was looking at your web site about bankers boxes, and wondered if you knew of a source for non-commercial looking boxes. I'm looking for some brightly colored ones, if they are available. I just put shelves in our bedroom closet (we have 9 foot ceilings, and all the upper space was going to waste) and I want to use bankers boxes to store "stuff" like sweaters and clothes that we only wear part of the year. My wife doesn't want it to look like office storage though.

I had gone into The Container Store and asked about "bankers boxes" and the salesperson didn't know what a bankers box was. It turns out they have solid white ones, but no colored ones.

Well, there are a few colored bankers boxes available from Fellowes - they don't seem "brightly colored," though. There's one in red, and one in cornflower blue.




Another product that's an exact match is the MeBox, which I've written about before, but Design Within Reach doesn't carry that product any more. There are other distributors listed, though, so hopefully you can still buy them, if not as easily. However, I did find some other storage boxes that are somewhat similar in size, and might work for you.




West Elm's canvas file boxes could possibly work. Update on July 15, 2011: West Elm no longer sells these boxes.




While IKEA stores drive me crazy, IKEA does have some boxes that could work. Here is the Kassett box; there's also Strikt.




Finally, these colorful cardboard boxes come from Kid-Eco the U.K., but it appears the company ships around the world. The boxes are available in a number of sizes. Kid-Eco calls them toy storage boxes, but there's no reason they couldn't store any number of things.