How to Store a Bike Indoors

Sometimes your favorite outdoor wheels (i.e., your bike) need to come inside. Whether you don't have a garage, live in an apartment with a no-bikes-on-the-porch rule, or bad weather means it's bye-bye bike rack and hello back room—sometimes you need a way to store your bike indoors.

And while it would certainly be simple to drop your bike by your couch and leave it there, there's a better way to go about keeping your bike safely stored. Especially if you live with little kids or a nippy pup, you're going to want to protect your ride.

Wall Hanging

Building a bike wall mount isn't anything new. Garages have been peppered with them for years now, but building a stylish bike wall mount indoors is a new challenge. Start by picking materials that work well with your space. If you have an industrial vibe in your home, use reclaimed wood, brass, or black metal.

We love the look of a simple wood board mounted to the wall, with one or two metal hooks attached to the board to hang the bike on. To class it up, stain the wood and pick a metal that matches your home or office — wherever you will be hanging the bike. Attach the wood to the wall on a stud to ensure that your drywall can handle the weight of your bike. Even a lighter road bike needs to hang on a hook secured by a stud. You can find a stud using a stud finder.

Before you attach your wood to the wall, make sure that your bike has the clearance it needs to hang without hitting the floor or anything around it.

Bike Rack

If you have a larger open space in your home, or a dedicated workout area, consider installing a custom bike rack. Like a traditional bike rack, but smaller, this bike rack could be housed in a mudroom or basement and can store your bike just like outside. No locks needed. This is a great solution for people who need to store multiple bikes inside or businesses that want to give people an option to store their bikes in the office.

Horizontal Bike Storage

If hanging your bike by the tire is something you want to avoid, you're going to need to build horizontal bike storage. Simply put, you need to build a mini shelf, ledge, or box that the body of your bike can rest comfortably on. You can buy a bike clip, or you can build a box/shelf with a divet meant to cradle the body of your bike.

If you're looking to DIY this project, you may need some special tools to carve out the divet in your small shelf for the bike to sit on. If you don't own power tools, consider renting them from a local hardware store or borrowing them from a friend. You can also simply add a ledge to a small DIY floating shelf to keep the bike from slipping if you don't want to carve a divet in the wood.

When you finish your shelf, make sure you also attach it to a stud in the wall so that it's equipped to your bike for a really, really long time.

Modify Furniture

If you've got a saw and wood furniture you don't mind modifying, a simple slit can solve a whole bike-load of problems. We've seen people cut slits in furniture just wide enough to nestle a bike tire in. The tire sits a little over halfway down in the slit, and the bike is held securely.

You can cut a single slit for the front tire so that the front tire nestles into your coffee table while your back tire sits on the floor. You can also cut two slits so that the entire bike sits down in an end table or storage cubes. This a great DIY for someone who is willing to have their bike as part of the home decor.

This DIY calls for a whole lot of precision, so if that's not you, consider a different bike storing method.

If you'll be riding your bike daily and then bringing it inside to store, check out our DIY cleaners that can help keep your ride clean.