The 4 Best Bike Storage Ideas of 2025
Top pick
Simple to set up and take down, this graceful yet sturdy two-bike stand can be easily adjusted to fit any type of bike.
We believe that the Delta Cycle Michelangelo Two-Bike Gravity Stand is the best choice for most people who need to store one or two bikes in a small apartment. If you have one relatively unobstructed patch of wall that’s wide enough to fit a bike lengthwise (about six feet), this is the rack that you should go with. (As we mentioned above, we heard from Delta last year that the company will be dropping “Michelangelo” from the rack’s name. You may still continue to see the old name on websites and on packaging, though.)
The stand is simple to set up. At first glance, the main components of the stand look barely capable of supporting one bike, let alone two: The steel tubing is a little over an inch in diameter, and you connect the segments with simple Phillips head bolts. The arms aren’t attached with bolts or screws or any hardware at all, though—you slide the twisty end of each arm onto the stand’s frame, and once you’ve moved the arm to where you want it, the friction provided by a plastic sleeve ensures that the arm stays in place. The other end of the arm is flattened and covered in rubber so your bike’s frame won’t slip or get scratched.
Setting up the stand took me about 20 minutes, and I wasn’t even giving it my full attention. (The TV was on.) Doubtful that this design would work, I put the stand in my living room, loaded it with two 30-pound bikes, and left them there for nearly three months—neither moved an inch.
It is lightweight yet sturdy. Despite the delicate-seeming tubing and the low-tech method of assembly, this stand is far sturdier than the other gravity stand we tested, the Racor PLB-2R. The bulkier steel bars that make up the PLB-2R don’t fit together securely at all, which makes the whole thing wobble alarmingly. The Michelangelo is also more forgiving than the PLB-2R: It doesn’t need to rest flush against the wall, but the PLB-2R does—a chair rail or wainscoting would make the PLB-2R unusable.
Its arms can be repositioned to suit any frame shape. You can adjust the height of the arms on the Michelangelo when you’re assembling the rack, or after the fact. It’s not hard to figure out how to twist the arms off and on. One arm can be higher than the other, which means that you can rest a bike on the rack even if it has a sloping top tube or no top tube at all. The rack also comes with a pair of small accessory hooks that twist onto the rack’s tubing in the same way as the arms. I wouldn’t trust them with anything truly heavy (they tended to fall off whenever I lifted the rack to move it), but they’d be fine for a helmet.
It’s very low-impact: You have to drill only one hole in the wall. A notice on the outside of the box we received read “Leans against the wall—no attachment required!” This was contradicted by the instructions inside, which insisted that you attach the supplied “wall stabilizing chain” to the rack and to the wall to prevent the “accidental toppling of the rack.” (This is that one hole you’ll have to drill.) It’s a good idea to follow those instructions, especially if you have kids or live in earthquake country. To be honest, though, I didn’t bother and never heard so much as a rattle. The rack’s splayed feet kept the combined bikes-and-rack’s center of gravity comfortably close to the wall, even when I tried pulling the top of the rack toward me. It wouldn’t be impossible to pull over, but you’d have to be doing so intentionally, not accidentally knocking into the rack.
How the Michelangelo has held up
Staff members using the Michelangelo have reported no problems; in fact, one of them had, a few years ago, moved in with a new boyfriend, who brought with him three Michelangelos that he’d owned happily for five years. We had heard from one reader who said that one of the arms on his stand slipped out of place after 15 minutes of use; after examining photos that he supplied of his setup, we realized he’d omitted installing the O-rings that were meant to go under each arm. Delta has since tweaked the design of the rack, and it no longer requires the O-rings. We bought one of these new racks to check it out; it’s been working just fine for five years now, but we’ll continue to monitor it just to be sure.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Two very large bikes may not both fit. According to one very tall Amazon customer, if you ride a large bike (we’re talking 60 centimeters, as bikes are typically measured), you might not be able to fit two bikes of that size on this rack. His workaround was to pair one of his bikes with one of his wife’s much smaller bike on the rack.
The accessory hooks are easy to dislodge. This only happens, though, if you’re moving the rack around the room.
