Storage DIY Ideas: How to Cover a Box With Fabric

by Elena McGrew

3 Materials

$20

1 Hour

Easy

Make storage boxes that perfectly match your home decor with this easy how-to for covering storage boxes with fabric. A simple DIY idea that will help you upstyle your old storage bins.

i had a few old and ugly ikea storage boxes

Start by measuring the inside of the box and cut patches of fabric with the same dimensions (air on the side of caution here and leave a bit of extra fabric just in case - it's easier to overlap the fabric patches than to fill in for missing pieces). Then, glue the fabric patches on the inside of the box.

Now measure the outside dimensions of the box. Cut and glue fabric patches that are 2" longer than these dimensions. We want to have some overlap between the fabric on the inside and that on the outside, so this is where the extra 2" come in handy.

Once I had the upstyled small storage bin ready, I decided to also refashion an old ottoman I had (the original bright blue color was driving me crazy!) Same story here - measure the sides, leave some extra inches on each side just in case, cut the fabric patches and glue them on the ottoman.

Finally, I went after four very old IKEA storage bins. To save some fabric, I only covered the front of the bins, leaving a few extra inches of fabric on the sides, at the top, and at the bottom to make it easier to slide them in and out the cube shelf.

To make it easier to pull these storage bins out, I added cute vintage knobs.

Here you can see my brand new DIY storage.

And these are the cute upstyled IKEA boxes with drawer knobs.

The ottoman also turned out quite alright and now everything matches.

I cut a hole in the fabric for these smaller storage boxes so I can still easily pull them out of the shelf.

Some of the leftover fabric also came in handy - I used it to up-cycle old jars and make little storage containers for cotton and band-aids. If you'd like to take a look at this related project, check out my blog post on DIY bathroom jar containers.