A locker is a small, usually narrow storage compartment. They are commonly found in dedicated cabinets, very often in large numbers, in various public places such as locker rooms

Changeroom

A changing room, locker room, dressing room or changeroom is a room or area designated for changing one's clothes...

, work places, schools, transport centres, and the like. They vary in size, purpose, construction, and security.

General description and characteristics

Lockers are normally quite narrow, of varying heights and tier arrangements. Width and depth usually conform to standard measurements, although non-standard sizes are occasionally found. Public places with lockers often contain large numbers of them, such as in a school. They are usually made of painted sheet metal

The characteristics that usually distinguish them from other types of cabinet or cupboard or storage container are:

• They are usually equipped with a lock
  Lock (device)
  A lock is a mechanical or electronic fastening device that is released by a physical object or secret information , or combination of more than one of these....
  
  , or at least a facility for padlocking (occasionally both).
• They are usually intended for use in public places, and intended for the short- or long-term private use of individuals for storing clothing or other personal items. Users may rent a locker for a single use or for a period of time for repeated use. Some lockers are offered as a free service to people partaking of certain activities that require the safekeeping of personal items.
• There are usually but not always several of them joined together.

Lockers are usually physically joined together side by side in banks, and are commonly made from steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

, although wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

, laminate

Laminate

A laminate is a material that can be constructed by uniting two or more layers of material together. The process of creating a laminate is lamination, which in common parlance refers to the placing of something between layers of plastic and gluing them with heat and/or pressure, usually with an...

, and plastic

Plastic

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

 are other materials sometimes found. Steel lockers which are banked together share side walls, and are constructed by starting with a complete locker; further lockers may then be adding by constructing the floor, roof, rear wall, door, and just one extra side wall, the existing side wall of the previous locker serving as the other side wall of the new one. The walls, floors, and roof of lockers may be either riveted together (the more traditional method) or, more recently, welded together.

Locker doors usually have some kind of ventilation to provide for the flow of air to aid in cleanliness. These vents usually take the form of a series of horizontal angled slats at the top and bottom of the door, although sometimes parallel rows of small square or rectangular holes are found instead, running up and down the door. Less often, the side or rear walls may also have similar ventilation.

Locker doors usually have door stiffeners fixed vertically to the inside of the door, in the form of a metal plate welded to the inner surface, and protruding outward a fraction of an inch, thus adding to the robustness of the door and making it harder to force open.

Lockers are often manufactured by the same companies who produce filing cabinets, stationery cabinet

Stationery cabinet

A stationery cabinet is a large steel cabinet with shelves inside, used for storing a variety of items, often stationery or books or other office supplies...

s (occasionally wrongly referred to as lockers), steel shelving, and other products made from sheet steel

Sheet metal

Sheet metal is simply metal formed into thin and flat pieces. It is one of the fundamental forms used in metalworking, and can be cut and bent into a variety of different shapes. Countless everyday objects are constructed of the material...

.

Variable characteristics of lockers

There are a number of features or characteristics which may vary in lockers. Because purchasers will need to specify what they want in each of these when ordering, it is more common to order a particular configuration rather than buy "off the shelf" in a shop, although certain very common configurations can be found in shops fairly easily. These features include:

• Bank size: This specifies the number of lockers wide a unit is. It does not necessarily refer to the total number of compartments, but rather the number of compartments wide the entire cabinet is. So a bank of three may contain six lockers, for example, if they are two-tier lockers. In short, the total number of lockers is the bank size multiplied by the number of tiers. Sometimes the term "bay" is used instead of "bank", although "bank" appears to be the more standard term; on other occasions, "bay" refers to a single locker width within a bank, including all tiers of locker directly on top of each other.

• Tiers: lockers may be specified as single-tier (full height), two-tier, three-tier, etc., meaning that the lockers are stacked on top of each other in layers two high, three high, etc. Tiers are commonly up to eight high; on occasion, even more tiers may be found, in the case of very small lockers for such purposes as storing laptop computers. The commonest numbers of tiers found in lockers are, in order, one, two, and four; three-tier lockers are rather less common, and other numbers such as five, six, or eight even less common still - seven almost non-existent. Since locker cabinets are most commonly 6 feet (182.9 cm.) high (although there are exceptions), the height of individual lockers varies according to how many tiers are accommodated within the cabinet. The height of individual lockers is usually approximately 6 feet (182.9 cm.) divided by the number of tiers, so that two-tier lockers are about 3 feet (91.4 cm.) high, three-tier lockers 2 feet (61 cm.) high, four-tier lockers 1.5 feet (45.7 cm.) high, and so on. Standard features often vary according to the number of tiers: single-tier lockers usually include a shelf about a foot (roughly 30 cm.) from the top, and a hanging rail (sometimes with one or two hooks) immediately underneath that, at the top of the large compartment beneath the shelf; two- or three-tier lockers usually lack the shelf, but include the hanging rail; lockers with four or more tiers usually have none of these fittings, but consist of just the bare compartment.

• Material: steel
  Steel
  Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
  
   is the traditional material; but wood
  Wood
  Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
  
  , plastic
  Plastic
  A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...
  
  , or laminate
  Laminate
  A laminate is a material that can be constructed by uniting two or more layers of material together. The process of creating a laminate is lamination, which in common parlance refers to the placing of something between layers of plastic and gluing them with heat and/or pressure, usually with an...
  
   are sometimes used. Plastic or laminate lockers are sometimes advocated in environments, such as near swimming pools, where moisture accumulation may cause steel lockers to rust over time.

• Locking options: various types of key locking or padlocking facility are available now. Key locking options include flush locks, cam locks, or locks incorporated into a rotating handle; padlocking facilities may be a simple hasp and staple, or else a padlocking hole may be included in a handle, often called a latchlock. More modern designs include keyless operation, either by coin deposit (which may or may not be returned when use of the locker terminates), or by using electronic keypads to enter passwords for later reopening the locker. Some older lockers used a drop-latch which was incorporated into the door handle, and slid up and down and could be padlocked at the bottom in the "down" position, but these are less used now. Three-point locking
  Three-point locking
  Three-point locking is a locking system installed in cabinet or locker doors to enable more secure locking. Whereas in single-point locking, the door on a cabinet locks only at the point where the key is turned, half-way up the edge of the door, three-point locking enables the top and bottom of the...
  
   is not possible with this type of latch, because it needs to be operated by means of a latch that rotates rather than slides up and down; so this drop-latch is probably a less secure locking option, which may be why it is little used nowadays.

• Number of locking points: Locker doors may lock with either single-
  Single-point locking
  Single-point locking is a locking system in cabinet doors where locking takes places only at the point half-way up the edge of the door, where the latch engages with the door-jamb...
  
   or three-point locking
  Three-point locking
  Three-point locking is a locking system installed in cabinet or locker doors to enable more secure locking. Whereas in single-point locking, the door on a cabinet locks only at the point where the key is turned, half-way up the edge of the door, three-point locking enables the top and bottom of the...
  
  , but this is not normally chosen as a separate option, and the choice is usually dependent on the number of tiers in the lockers, or whether they are a high-security model, although some manufacturers do allow purchasers to specifically choose an option here that goes against their normal practice. Single-point locking locks the door at only the point where the latch engages with the door-frame, whereas three-point locking uses extensible steel rods to lock the top and bottom of the door as well.

• Dimensions (Note that, in English-speaking countries, even those commonly using metric measurements now, locker dimensions are usually clean numbers of inches or feet, while the corresponding metric measurements are uneven, involving decimal places when precision is required, presumably resulting from continued use of locker designs based on feet and inches, unchanged for decades other than for cosmetic features.):

• • Width: Lockers are usually designed in standard widths: 12 inches (30.5 cm.) wide is a common width, and 15 inches (38 cm.) has become more common recently. Other widths are occasionally found, however, especially in the U.S., where narrower or (occasionally) wider lockers can be found.

• • Depth: Most standard lockers are approximately 18 inches (46 cm.) deep, so this property does not usually vary, unless a non-standard model is chosen, or arranged by special order. In the U.S., 12- or 15-inch-deep (30.5 or 38 cm.) lockers seem to have some currency, although this is virtually unknown in Australia.

• • Height: Similarly, locker cabinets are a standard height, usually about 6 feet (182.9 cm.), so this does not vary either, unless non-standard models are ordered.

• Color: lockers were often a uniform dark-grey some decades ago, but a range of colors is offered by most manufacturers now. A few manufacturers offer two-tone coloring, where the doors and locker bodies are of different colors.

• Steel thickness: lockers tend to be made from a standard thickness of steel, which is commonly 0.8 mm. thick; but heavy-duty or high-security lockers are offered as a standard option by some manufacturers, or may be available on special order. A typical locker of this sort may be constructed from steel 1.2 mm. thick, for example, and is usually fitted with three-point locking, regardless of the number of tiers.

• Sloping tops: while most lockers have flat tops, some manufacturers offer the option of sloping tops to their range of lockers. The slope may be of either 30 degrees or 45 degrees to the horizontal, sloping towards the front, and the purpose of this is to make it impossible to store items on top of the lockers, or to make it harder for dust or other debris to accumulate there. This is an important factor in places like food-processing factories or restaurants where hygiene requirements must be met.

Non-standard types

There are a number of less standard lockers that are offered by various manufacturers. These include:

• Gun lockers: These are lockers or safes specifically designed for the secure storage of guns and ammunition. They broadly resemble normal single-tier lockers, but tend to be slightly less high than normal single-tier lockers, and are often free-standing, and not banked together. They are fitted with internal racks designed for holding firearms. They have a shelf at the top like normal single-tier lockers, although in this case it is closed and locked by a separate door, because of legal requirements in some countries that firearms and ammunition be stored and locked separately. They always lock with three-point locking
  Three-point locking
  Three-point locking is a locking system installed in cabinet or locker doors to enable more secure locking. Whereas in single-point locking, the door on a cabinet locks only at the point where the key is turned, half-way up the edge of the door, three-point locking enables the top and bottom of the...
  
  , which is in some countries a legal requirement for the storage of firearms. Sometimes they are made of the standard kind of sheet steel used in manufacturing normal lockers, and sometimes they are made of extremely thick heavy-duty steel and in this case resemble a safe
  Safe
  A safe is a secure lockable box used for securing valuable objects against theft or damage. A safe is usually a hollow cuboid or cylinder, with one face removable or hinged to form a door. The body and door may be cast from metal or formed out of plastic through blow molding...
  
   more than a normal locker. In Australia there are strict regulations governing the storage of firearms following the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia on 28 April, 1996, and cabinets used for storing firearms must be bolted to the floor or a wall if the cabinet is under a certain weight. Dedicated gun lockers are likely to include holes in the cabinet to accommodate such bolting. Several locker manufacturers also offer dedicated gun lockers.

• Bicycle locker
  Bicycle locker
  A bicycle locker or bike box is a locker / box in which a single bicycle can be placed and locked in. They are usually provided at places where numerous cyclists need bike parking for extended times , yet where the bikes might otherwise get damaged or stolen .Bike boxes are considered the highest...
  
  s: These are large storage compartments, usually in outdoor locations near railway stations and the like where people may want to store bicycles securely. They are often banked together, with individual lockers shaped like an isosceles triangle for efficient and compact storage of a bicycle. This triangular shape permits the lockers to be grouped either in a radial pattern (with the sharpest points of the lockers together), or in a row in alternating orientations. See Bicycle locker
  Bicycle locker
  A bicycle locker or bike box is a locker / box in which a single bicycle can be placed and locked in. They are usually provided at places where numerous cyclists need bike parking for extended times , yet where the bikes might otherwise get damaged or stolen .Bike boxes are considered the highest...
  
   for more details about this.

• Heavy-duty / high-security lockers: These are similar to the standard models, but are usually made from thicker-than-usual steel, and have three-point locking, regardless of the number of tiers involved. Some models are made from steel 1.2 mm. thick, in contrast to the more usual 0.8 mm.

• Laundry lockers: These are used in places like hospitals or food-processing work-places where uniforms have to be collected, laundered, then returned to their owners. The locker cabinet contains a number of very narrow lockers, each of whose doors is keyed using a key held by the owner, so that they have access only to their own locker; but the entire array of doors is embedded in a much larger door covering the entire front of the cabinet. Opening this opens all the lockers simultaneously, and requires the use of a master key which is held by whoever collects items deposited in lockers, for laundering, then returned in the same way, after which they items are accessible to owners using their individual small doors.

• Services lockers: These are extra-wide lockers used by fire or police services, and typically have a number of different compartments within a single door to accommodate different pieces of equipment used by fire or police personnel, such as special shelves to accommodate helmets, boots, and so on.

• Jumbo lockers: One or two manufacturers use this term to describe a locker that is essentially similar to the services locker, although it may have fewer compartments or special fittings - but there are no consistent differences between manufacturers' descriptions of less usual lockers.

• School lockers: These lockers may be single- or two-tier, and are fitted with internal divisions or shelves to accommodate both hanging space and room for storing textbooks.

• Perforated lockers: These are similar to the standard types of locker, but the door and walls are made largely or entirely of perforated steel, with hundreds of holes creating a strong mesh arranged in a diagonal pattern. This is used where good ventilation is required, or where, for security reasons, it is necessary that the contents can be examined visually while the doors are locked.

• Backpacker lockers: These rather rare lockers are designed to accommodate backpacks in places like backpackers' hostels, and are similar to two-tier lockers, but with larger dimensions. Typically, the height may be standard, but the width and depth will be several inches bigger. These usually lack internal fitting such as shelves, hanging railes, or hooks.

• Stepped/2-step lockers: These are two-tier lockers, usually available only in 15-inch (38-cm.) width; but the compartments and their doors have an L-shaped cross-section, which causes the division between the doors to follow a zig-zag pattern. This configuration enables more hanging height to be included in both upper and lower lockers; but part of each compartment (the lower part of the upper one and the upper part of the lower one) will be only half the usual width of two-tier lockers.

• Executive lockers: This is usually a larger unit offered by a few manufacturers, not banked but free-standing; but inside the door will be several compartments, including a full wardrobe-type hanging compartment, as well as a number of other smaller compartments for varied uses.

• TA-50 Military Gear Lockers: These lockers are widely used by the US Department of Defense as personnel lockers. They can be made of several locker materials but usually are made of steel or wire mesh. The term TA-50 refers to any type of military equipment so the sizes and configurations are generally based on the type of TA-50 stored.

Doorless designs

There are also completely different types of doorless locker design, such as one that is cylindrical in shape rather than rectangular. One such design eliminates the use of doors by offering a cylinder open at the front: you place your items in, then rotate the cylinder into the housing, which turns the opening away, and secures the contents.

Abolition of lockers

Some schools in the United States have been reported to completely abolish the use of lockers. Security concerns are cited as the reason for this, with the concern being that lockers may be used to store contraband items such as weapons or drugs or pornographic material. There has been some controversy over in what circumstances school authorities or law-enforcement officials are permitted to search lockers, with or without informing the users, or with or without the users being present at the time of the search, and it has been considered a civil liberties issue, particularly in the U.S.

Other advocates of lockerless schools also cite reasons such as reducing noise by eliminating the clang of dozens of locker doors, or creating a more appealing environment aesthetically. It has also been claimed that removing lockers provides good training for students by forcing them to be more efficient in managing their books, and taking the time to plan what books they will need, and carrying only those ones.

In schools without lockers, students are sometimes provided with two complete sets of textbooks, one set being kept at school for use in class, and the other being kept at home for referring to for homework, thus limiting the amount of heavy carrying that would otherwise be required without having lockers to store them in between classes. However, research has shown an increase in the incidence of back injuries in some students, which has been directly attributed to the lack of lockers for storing books in, thus forcing students to spend more time carrying heavy loads of books in backpacks.

Some students oppose the abolition of lockers, arguing that their locker is one of the few private spaces they have in an environment which is otherwise communal and impersonal.

Coin operated public luggage lockers can be present in bus station

Bus station

A bus station is a structure where city or intercity buses stop to pick up and drop off passengers. It is larger than a bus stop, which is usually simply a place on the roadside, where buses can stop...

s and rail stations. In some countries they were commonplace from the 1950s to the 1970s, but eliminated for concern that bombs may be hidden in them. Some airports have also removed them for this reason.