[sirk390]

I you hang them at 45 degree the depth will be reducted by sqrt(2). (about 0.7 x hanger length), and you will lose space on each side. And the more you increase the angle, the more you will lose space on the sides. With this technique, you will reduce the depth to 0.5 x hanger length and not lose space on the side.

[trabant00]

With this solution you lose the most space on the side because of the notched rod. The notches have to be wide enough for a the thickest stuff, but then a shirt will take as much space as thick coat.

If your goal is to save as much depth as possible the solution is obviously front to back direction rods, as opposed to side to side. There's plenty of options available from retractable ones to wall mounted ones that don't require a closet and so on.

[sltkr]

> The notches have to be wide enough for a the thickest stuff, but then a shirt will take as much space as thick coat.

It's probably easier to take out a hinger and let a thick coat take up two spaces (or more). Assuming you have only few coats, that's more efficient than increasing the spacing uniformly.

It does seem like you lose some flexibility due to the slots, though.

It also seems possible to put many more slots in the rod. There is no functional reason why slots and hingers need to match 1 on 1.

> If your goal is to save as much depth as possible the solution is obviously front to back direction rods, as opposed to side to side.

Somehow it feels like it would be harder to store the same amount of clothes on front-to-back rods. I also think it would be harder to browse clothes and take out the shirt you want; even with the retractable rod you have to pull out and push in rods just to see what's on them.

[sltkr]

Yes, but folding the clothes doubles their thickness, so you can fit fewer hingers on a single rod than traditional hangers.

Also the coat hinger system uses fixed distance between the hingers (due to the slots in the rod) which seems like it would be less efficient: thick sweaters and thin T-shirts take up the same width.

It's actually not clear if the hinger system works all that well if you need to hang a lot of thick clothes; the rack looks pretty crowded in the available pictures.

I guess you would have to try this in practice to see which system works better. I wouldn't be surprised if it boils down to "the 45 degree angle is better, but the coat hinger looks neater".