Do It Yourself Headboards!

I am still in college and while I love decorating and redecorating my apartment I definitely have to stick to a strict budget.  Sometimes that can be challenging but when you get creative it make the project loads cheaper and a lot more fun to work on.

I have recently discovered that my bed needs a headboard.  I don’t have a lot of money to spend obviously AND I cannot actually attach this to my bed since my apartment is furnished by the owners.  I was recently watching HGTV and immediately fell in love with the idea of making my own headboard.  Here are some cute and fairly inexpensive ideas.

Use old doors to create a headboard – this is a really neat idea because old doors can be found on the cheap at garage sales, flee markets, and the like.  This usually involves stacking them or standing them up next to each other to get the desired size.  They are also completely customizable – paint them, stain them, decorate them with lights, murals, anything!

The Ply Wood Method – You can create a very simple but very chic looking headboard (think Ikea from my last post) on a very low budget and in just one afternoon.  Simply take a piece of ply wood or a couple of pieces and secure them together.  Get some batting or foam and cut it to match the size of the wood and secure it to the wood.  Then take some cloth (or I used a sheet – very cheap and still looks wonderful!) and cover the batting and the wood on the front side – the side that will be seen.  The back may look bad but that is A okay since no one will be seeing it.  Simply put it up against the wall and push your bed up against it and voila!  You can get creative with it and add buttons or other embellishments or designs too.

Use a Lot of Frames – You can take a hint from popular decorating styles and frame your bed (haha) with picture frames.  They could either be empty, filled with pictures of people you know, or filled with a variety of art pieces, record sleeves, etc.  Personally I like to keep my house personal so I either opt for art work that I have handpicked and really love rather than just a run of the mill poster print or I shoot my own photos, edit them through photoshop to give the same effect that I want the room to portray (more on this later).  This is an easy one because it is so versatile.  You can hang big frames, small frames, different size frames, whatever.  Be creative!

Hang curtains - I tried this in one of my rooms and loved the way that it turned out.  It is probably the easiest of all these DIY ideas because all you need is a curtain rod and a some curtains.  Hang the curtain rod above your bed at whatever height you want then add the curatins.  Simple right?  It’s super cute and easy and whenever you decide to change the color or theme of your room then all you have to do is change the curtains. You can also get creative – hang curtains around you bed or over the top of the bed and drape them back.

Use a bookshelf - If you are in need of extra storage then this might be a good solution for you.  You can either buy or make a bookshelf or cubby system and simply push it against the wall and push your bed up against it.  To keep the clutter down add cloth boxes or decorated shoe boxes to the shelves to hide things you don’t want setting out or place books on the shelves instead to give it a nice intellectual feel.

So there you have it!  Some of my ideas and finds on how to create a nice headboard of your own without breaking the bank.  What do you think? Do you have any more ideas? Do you plan on trying out one of these? If you do I would love to see pictures!

Note: all photos are linked back to the location where they were found.

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