These days, a lot of bedrooms and beds are eschewing the headboard. There’s a number of reasons for it - perceived lack of space, modern bed designs no longer calling for one, or simply not seeing what good they can serve. Which are all valid choices - and maybe it’s our love of home storage talking - we think there’s a lot of potential in these spaces to add more storage to your bedroom! If you don’t have a traditional headboard, that means the area behind your bed is ripe for a little extra storage...and couldn’t we all use that in our rooms, sometimes?

DIY Floating Headboard with Storage Ideas

The nice thing about these sort of storage headboards is that they’re only as complicated as you want them to be. To create a more traditional ‘headboard’, you could mount some wood to the wall - without it touching your bed - and leave gaps for shelving or storage. You’ll want to make sure the wood being used matches your bed both in size and color, and either drill it straight into the wall, or find some kind of mounting system like wall hooks or storage rails. You can, however, skip the ‘headboard’ part altogether, and just jump right to the shelves! One of our favorite little tricks for creating a headboard is to use floating shelves, strategically placed on the wall behind the bed (where the headboard would’ve been) to create storage space. Think about it - by filling this space with wall shelving, you can give yourself even more space to set down things like your glasses, your phone, or even that much-needed cup of water everyone seems to need around 3 AM. It’s a similar concept to floating nightstands, but with the added advantage of taking up space that’s normally either empty, or given over to a flat headboard with no added advantages. You will want to be careful, of course; you don’t want your new floating shelves too low or directly over where you sleep in order to prevent injury. Consider placing your new shelves off to the side where they’re not directly overhead, and high enough that they won’t be in the way. Otherwise, all you have to do is use your imagination! The shelves can hold books, decorations to liven up the room, or just an extra phone charger for when you’re up too late scrolling through Instagram. Depending on the color of the shelves, they could also be a good way to spruce up what is otherwise a pretty empty place in the bedroom - maybe you could use them to frame a favorite movie poster or painting to brighten the space a little bit, or just make sure the colors of the shelves pop against a plain wall. And if they add that little extra storage to what tends to be a pretty cluttered room? All the better!