Pete Seeger may have had it right in his 1963 hit song Little Boxes — “There’s a green one and a pink one, and a blue one and a yellow one … And they all look just the same” — but he was talking about housing in suburbia. Self-storage units may also all look just the same and like suburban housing, and they, and the wider self-storage market, also exist for a reason, to fill a consumer demand.

But they don’t all look just the same. Just as countries and consumers across Europe come in all shapes and sizes, so do self-storage units.

Recent research undertaken by Sell House Fast has found a varied approach to self-storage across Europe. Much depends on the culture in individual countries and on the space in houses. 85 percent of self-storage facilities is concentrated in just six countries. The United Kingdom, where owner-occupation is still the majority tenure type, has by far the largest self-storage market, with 1,432 facilities; France and Spai