Tack rooms can be simple with just a few shelves and some homemade saddle racks in a tiny corner. Or they can be luxurious spaces with comfortable seating areas and walls of saddles. Most tack rooms tend to fall somewhere in the middle. Regardless of the size of the stable or the size of the budget, a tack room is a necessary space for storing saddles, bridles and other equipment in a safe and organized fashion.
For busy horse barns, the tack room can be one of the most important spaces to consider. Here are some great ideas to get you going.
What is a Tack Room?
A tack room serves as your primary storage space for all types of equine equipment, like saddles, bridles, stirrups, reins, and other items. Many horse barn builders tend to overlook this room and not make it a priority — but you will be spending a lot of time in the space, so having an exceptional tack room is important. If you have ever owned a horse barn without a tack room, you know the annoyance of when you are on the brink of being ready to ride and the realization that you have forgotten a girth or key piece of tack. The inclusion of secure storage for your expensive tack and equipment, the handiness of it all being in one spot for last minute needs when tacking up and training, is a smart decision.
Tack rooms should be both beautiful and functional, so keep these design ideas in mind. Include a large island with baskets, bins, and hooks that make it easy to access your equipment. Incorporate shelves with hooks to store and retrieve boots. And maximize wall space with a variety of cleaning racks for cleaning your saddle and other tack items.
What is Stored in a Tack Room?
A tack room can be inside your horse barn, a stand-alone structure, or in a horse trailer. We use all three for different reasons but they each have the same purpose – it is where we keep everything related to horses from saddles to hoof picks.
Here is a list of the basic items you should expect to store in a tack room.
- Saddles
- Bridles
- Reins
- Halters
- Lead ropes
- Bits
- Horse blankets or fly sheets
- Saddle pads
- Leg wraps
- Hoof boots/dressing/trimmers/picks
- Blinkers
- Extra girths
- Other equipment
How to Organize Your Tack Room
Organizing your tack room can be surprisingly satisfying. It can be a fun activity to do in the off-season, when you are not busy in the spring preparing for shows or getting ready to head out on your next big fall trail ride. When the weather is chilly outside, get yourself a cleaning kit and a space heater and set to work making your horse equipment storage area organized, clean and safe.
Start with Cleaning
The first step to organizing your horse barn tack room is to do a deep cleaning. With a good Shop-Vac you will not just be pushing dirt around, but instead, you can remove all that built-up dirt and debris from your tack storage area completely. Once you have vacuumed the whole room and all of your tack and surfaces in the room, keep cleaning! While the vacuum picks up loose debris, there is likely dried-on mud and dirt on the floor and walls.
Use a mop and lots of clean water to clean the floor of your barn. You can even use a hose to clean the floor of the tack room as long as you can dry it thoroughly afterward. After hosing, use a shop vac (which can handle wet messes) to vacuum up all of the excess water and leave the fans on to dry out the tack room floor before the moisture level of your tack raises to a degree that could cause mildew or mold.
Go Through EVERYTHING
The first step to getting out from under the clutter is to purge. You need to remove EVERYTHING. And while you are removing it, you are going to put it in 4 piles. Your piles will be keep, donate (or sell), undecided, and trash. It it easiest to have a large trash can out with you to make the trash part easier.
Maximize Wall Space
One of the best ways to organize your tack room is to maximize your use of the room’s wall space. Hang saddle and bridle racks up on the wall so you don’t depend on the portable saddle racks which take up floor space. Getting these items up and onto the walls will free up much of the room for additional storage.
You can also get things off the floor by installing a few wall-hanging cabinets. Old kitchen cabinets often find their way to yard sales, auctions, and even the side of the road ready for trash day. Finding an old cabinet worthy of recycling is like hitting a gold mine for tack room organization.
Label Your Totes
If you are using totes, storage units, or tack boxes to store items that you do not use frequently, then you can keep yourself well-organized by giving everything a detailed label. Do not just write “tack.” It is also a good idea to create a brief list highlighting what each tote or unit contains. Tape each list to the front of the container, or keep them all in a notebook. This way, you can quickly find something without having to dig to the bottom of every tote. Your life will be a lot simpler, and you’ll get to spend more time with your horse.
Considerations for the Perfect Tack Room
Whether you are building a tack room from scratch or simply sprucing up an existing one, the following layout ideas can help you optimize space and storage:
Planning
A horse tack room is an essential part of a horse stable and is used to store all kinds of equipment, such as saddles, bridles, grooming tools, and other accessories. Horse tack rooms can be used as a storage space for different things like tack, blankets, grooming tools, grooming products, etc.
The best horse tack room ideas are those that are practical, simple, and elegant. During the planning process you will also have to decide if the tack room will be a multi-functional space for social gatherings or a space for cleaning tack and/or a laundry area with room for a washer and dryer to launder blankets and wraps. A tack room can become more than just a place for storage.
Benches and seating areas create a welcoming atmosphere that encourages riders to kick off their boots and chat about their horse’s progress, clean tack together, watch training videos or simply sit and enjoy one another’s company.
Location
If you are building a new horse barn or stable, it is important to fully consider where your tack room will be placed. You will want a location that is convenient enough to provide easy access to all of your tack without jeopardizing security. Keep it close to or nearby a wash stall or prep/grooming area. A barn that requires frequent loading and unloading for shows should consider where the tack room is located in the barn relative to unloading a trailer after a show. In this case adding a rear door at the back wall may be a good idea to allow you to access your tack from outside.
Security
If your stable has heavy traffic flow, a tack room is a good way to keep the aisles free of potential hazards. However, you need to make security a priority to ensure that your expensive tack investments stay safe. Keeping track of equipment and tack can be a challenge at boarding stables with clients coming and going all day long—especially when it comes to the barn’s own supplies. Locking areas, separate tack rooms or locking storage can solve this problem.
Simplistic Efficiency
A well-planned tack room should have a place for everything. As long as a tack room is efficient, it does not necessarily have to be fancy. There are always ways to be creative and save on a budget. The tack room is not fancy, but it is efficient. Use a peg board to hang all of the extra bits and create a place for everything so that things do not end up on the floor.
Extra Considerations
Once basics have been covered it is also important to consider:
- Climate Control: Controlling the climate of the tack room can inhibit the growth of mold on leather equipment.
- Lighting: Overall good lighting coverage is important. Use fixtures that have an even throw of light so you do not have dart spots or dark corners.
- Doorway width: Make sure the door in and out of the tack room is an adequate size so when you are carrying a saddle you have enough room.
- Wall Space: Include as much wall space as possible. Extra room will always be needed to keep bridles, lead ropes, girths and more organized.
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