How to Design an Effective Self Storage Numbering System

Start with the big picture. Ask yourself:

  • What’s the layout of the facility?
  • What are your expansion plans?
  • How will tenants get onto the property?
  • What signage will help tenants find their unit?
  • For interior units — what extra directional signs will they need?

Next, create a logical numbering system that accounts for future development. Once the property is fully built out, the system should still be simple and intuitive — your manager should be able to tell a tenant exactly how to find their unit, and the tenant should have a smooth experience getting there. This is easier on smaller drive-up properties. Larger climate-controlled buildings are trickier and need more upfront thought.

Tips to Consider

  • Start with a clear reference point. It could be the office, the entry driveway, or a specific entry door to a climate controlled building .
  • On drive up units, number consecutively around the exterior of a building.
  • Maintain a consistent direction with your storage facility unit numbers.
  • Number down one side of an isle at a time. Avoid hotel system numbering. Hotel rooms are usually numbered even numbers on one side of the hall and odd numbers on the other. Hotel rooms are generally identical in size so this makes their numbering intuitive. Storage units are rarely the same size down an aisle. Trying to do even numbers on one side of the aisle and odd numbers on the other may be confusing.
  • In a climate controlled building, use logical groupings. Entry doors are a good place to start. Consider building divisions like fire doors as a separator.
  • Keep your numbering as simple as possible. Try to avoid unit numbers like ‘107B(a)10×10’. That number may mean a lot to you, but may confuse your tenant.
  • In buildings with more than 100 units per section, use four digit numbers.
  • We suggest starting any sequence of numbers with 1 instead of 0, so on a 2000 sequence of numbers start with unit 2001 instead of unit 2000. This is a small issue, but slightly more intuitive.
  • Because we are not on site and we don’t know what your strategies and future plans are, we are not the best judge of how your facility should be numbered. You can walk the aisles and make a far better judgement than we can from just looking at a set of plans.
  • And finally, we do follow the ‘other’ golden rule: You have the gold, you make the rules. You decide how you want your units numbered, give us the numbers you want and we will produce them for you!
  • If you would like an estimate for your self storage unit numbers click here.