By MIRIAM GOTTFRIED
Anyone wanting to buy all the gifts in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” should prepare to do a lot of wrapping—364 presents if all items mentioned in the entire song are wrapped.
Linda Howard is ready. The second floor of her 8,000-square-foot Los Angeles home has all the materials to give presence to her presents.
“I have ribbons galore assorted by colors, little cellophane, big cellophane, boxes, wrapping paper of all colors and holidays, cellophane bags, gift bags, bows, flowers and candy canes,” says Ms. Howard, a wedding and event planner and frequent hostess.
As the hours count down to Christmas, an increasing number of Americans are heading into their wrapping rooms, spaces found mainly in large, upscale homes dedicated to gift-wrapping and other crafts. Real-estate listings are touting wrapping rooms more frequently, and organizational outfitters like the Container Store have created specialized products to trick them out.
Candy Spelling, widow of television producer Aaron Spelling, famously has a gift-wrapping room in her 56,000-square-foot Bel Air, Calif., mansion. But homes need not be warehouse-sized in order to have a wrapping room. Some homeowners are converting closets into wrapping stations outfitted with paper and ribbon dispensers, plus ample storage bins for tissue, bows and gift bags.
Sally Horchow, an L.A.-based writer and frequent hostess, transformed the closet in her home office into a wrap station. She had seen large, ornate wrapping rooms at show houses and realized a smaller-scale version that would fit into her 2,000-square-foot house was achievable.
“It was a kind of Martha Stewart thing I’ve always dreamed about,” she says.
Ms. Horchow, whose father Roger founded the Horchow Collection catalog, says she gives gifts a couple times a week, ramping up during the holidays. She estimates she spends about nine minutes wrapping each one: “That’s how late I’m usually running to a party.”
The waist-high desk that fills Ms. Horchow’s closet has drawers that hold wrapping accessories like colored tape, bows and scissors. Cubbies hold greeting cards organized by occasion with file separators. Removable bars attached to the inside of the door swing out like a tie rack to hold the various fancy papers that Ms. Horchow collects. And a big roll of craft paper sits on the desk’s surface.
Ms. Howard, 62, has a large family and is often the one called on to host parties or holiday celebrations. She hosted 40 people at her Hanukkah party this year, and all got gifts. Wrapping supplies are organized by event type and even by color scheme to make the process more efficient.
Agatha Wallen, whose wrapping room in her Redlands, Calif., home was designed by California Closets, uses traditional wrapping paper, parchment paper, tissue, foil and even the comics page of the newspaper to wrap gifts. She orders some fancier papers from Kate’s Paperie in New York.
Recently Ms. Wallen has gotten into folding wrapping paper into fan-like creases before putting it on her gifts to give the gift a unique texture, and she usually adds a nice bow or ties on a trinket.
When Ms. Wallen wraps gifts for one of her sons, ages 1½ and 3, to bring to birthday parties, she tries to make the wrapping match the theme of the party if there is one.
For a recent Army-themed birthday party, she wrapped the gift in brown paper and then cut holes in it, pulling green and red tissue paper through them to make the gift look like it was exploding. She attached dog tags to the gift with the recipient’s name instead of a card.
“Sometimes the kids appreciate it, and sometimes they just tear right through it,” Ms. Wallen says.
Through his business, OrganizingLA, John Trosko has helped more than 100 clients set up, remodel or better organize wrapping rooms or wrapping closets. “It’s kind of like a man cave” for women, he says.
Mr. Trosko says a well-organized wrapping room needs either a basket or rollers for dispensing paper, a drawer where tissue can lay flat, a drawer for tools like scissors, glue and tape and space to organize spools of ribbon and other decorative items. Shelves for gifts awaiting wrapping are also helpful, as is a calendar listing upcoming birthdays and social engagements.
Most important, is a large table or desk at the right height for working while standing or sitting on a stool.
The Container Store has suggestions on its website for converting a spare bedroom into a wrapping room and sells items to outfit it. Kitchen designers and custom-cabinet makers can also design functional wrapping rooms. For example, Cuvee Storage Systems of Andover, Mass., a maker of custom wine cellars, also designs and installs wood-paneled wrapping rooms using the same hardwoods and 800 year-old virgin timber.
Owner Paul Fugere said the company has built two in the past six months, both just outside of Boston.
One, a hybrid craft-wrapping room, involved installing basic lacquered storage pieces and cost about $7,000. The other, exclusively used for wrapping, was done in all-American cherry hardwood with custom cabinetry, crown moldings and a three-part finish process. It cost $36,000.
Homebuilder KB Home has outfitted some extra rooms in its three- or four-bedroom model homes as wrapping rooms to offer prospective buyer ideas for using the space. The homes in Ormond Beach, Fla., were designed in collaboration with craft-maven Martha Stewart who also helped inspire and outfit the model wrapping room. KB has sold all 52 homes in phase 1 of the development and is making inroads into phase 2.
Dean Jones, owner of Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty Seattle, recently encountered a wrapping room for the first time in a 14,000 square-foot waterfront estate he is showing on Mercer Island, near Seattle.
The house, listed at $28.8 million, was designed for a family with four kids. In addition to the in-home movie theater and kitchen with three sinks and two Sub-Zero refrigerators, there’s a wrapping room.
“I’ve seen in custom homes a greater willingness to personalize,” says Mr. Jones.
“If you’re a mom who does a lot of charity work and entertaining, it would make sense to have a wrapping room, just like having a workout room makes sense for someone who likes to exercise regularly. It’s all about integrating lifestyle into the design of your home.”