Techniques are disclosed herein for controlling object placement in object storage. A placement component of a storage application receives a request to store a first object in an object store having multiple nodes. The object store determines a placement of the first object to one of the nodes based on an object namespace including a numerical namespace and a lexicographical namespace. Each node is assigned a corresponding subspace of the object namespace for storing objects. The first object includes a numerical namespace value and a lexicographical namespace value. A second object (a replica of the first object) is generated. The first object is stored to a first node based on the lexicographical namespace value. The second object is stored to a second node based on the numerical namespace value.