Bicycle storage in your home or apartment is hard! Especially when your bikes have wide bars and big tires. Over the years, I’ve found the best way to store bikes is hanging from the wall but the main issue is finding hangers that are durable, won’t scratch your wheels, and won’t bend over time. When we moved into our new home, I hung my bikes in a small room and posted about the process on Instagram. In doing so, I got a lot of requests for a write-up here on the Radavist. So here we are!
Now, I did a lot of research and found the best option for wall-mounted hangers but you should know there are a few key details you don’t want to miss.
I’ve been using a similar system to store my bikes for over 15 years and in that time, I’ve never had hydraulic brakes, droppers, or forks get gunky from hanging. You can hang bikes by the rear of the front wheel. Others will argue this isn’t good for hydro lines, yet I’ve never had an issue… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The secret to hanging bikes from the wall is to first measure your average bar width. Finding the average helps determine the bracket’s spacing. If all your bars are 800mm MTB bars, then a spacing of 400mm or 15″ should work fine. Yet if you’ve got various bar designs, you might want to make that spacing longer. It also helps to stagger the bikes vertically, allowing for space to compensate for MTB bars, dropper posts, rigid posts, and drop bars. If you have the room, I found 20″ on-center with 10″ of vertical staggering works for all bikes quite well. Yet, in our current setup at our home, I had to go with 18″ O.C. hooks with 8″ vertical staggering since two of my bikes have very long wheelbases and our ceiling is low.
Other hooks I have used in the past bent over time and the rubber coating on the hooks would rub off due to use…
What makes the BikeHand mounts so great is they’re machined aluminum, with a thick, rubber pad which kind of feels like an ESI grip on the hook to keep your wheels and their decals from getting scratched. They have four mounting holes and are supplied with screws and anchors, yet you should set the hardware aside…
These Toggler bolts will hold over 230 lbs. All they require is a 1/2″ hole drilled into your wall. Every hardware store will have these in stock. Normally, you could mount these hangers to studs but I’ve found the standard 16″ O.C. spacing of wall studs to be too close and many homes have inconsistent framing. I usually use just one Toggler bolt at the top hole and one standard wall anchor at the bottom. The bottom is just keeping the bracket from swaying side to side.
Now, the only downside to these, is they are only available on eBay and Amazon. I wish local shops could carry stock but I’ve never seen them anywhere but online. They do come in three packs ($49.90), or double packs ($35.90).
I have hung 29″x3″ tires and 700x38mm tires with ease. The heaviest bike I’m currently hanging is 34lbs. How do you store your bikes? Care to share your setup?
