DIY Headboards Under $100
These DIY headboards cost less than $100 to make and are the perfect addition to college dorms or apartments. They are renter friendly and made from materials you won’t expect!!! Most importantly they are so EASY to make!!!
Follow along to see how we made them!!
Jute Placemat Headboard: I made this one in just a night, and on a whim! It came to me in my second college apartment. I wanted my room to feel more like home rather than a student room in a college town. Naturally I started to look at ideas on Pinterest and put my own spin on an idea I loved!! I made this for a queen size bed, so if you decide to try it on another size, you may need to adjust your measurements!!
I started by going to my local Walmart and heading to the kitchen section…… There, I found these beautiful square, woven jute placemats!! You can find similar placemats on Amazon, or places like Big Lots or Home Depot. They were about $5 a piece, and I bought 10 of them! While I was at Walmart, I also picked up some hot glue sticks, a medium size cardboard box, and jute twine, the thick stuff! Total, I spent about $85 on materials.
I took it all back to my little townhome apartment and got to work!! I started by laying out all the placemats facedown to make sure the length would work for my queen size bed. The final layout was two rows of five placemats. See the pic for reference! It was going to be about 4 inches longer on both sides, but in the end, having it slightly bigger worked to my advantage! I decided to alternate the orientation of the placemats too, this hid any thickness and color inconsistencies that the placemats had. I then took the cardboard box, cut it on one side to unfold it lengthwise, and laid it on top of the placemats. It didn’t cover the placemats entirely, its only use was for supporting the back of the placemats!
Once I knew my measurements would work, I flipped the whole thing over and glued the placemats on the cardboard using hot glue. I may have used a lot of glue… Which is where the jute twine came in! Essentially I needed something to cover the edges of the placemats and to hide any imperfections in the seams! Using SIX pieces of the jute twine in each braid (I doubled up on the braids to make it thicker), I braided my heart out! I covered all the edges of the placemats with braided jute and let me tell you. It made it look SEAMLESS! I attached them with hot glue and let everything dry! Voila!
The next morning I found some heavy duty velcro Command Strips and attached them to the cardboard on the backside of the headboard. Total I put about six strips. Then I hung it up with the help from my wonderful roommate! Using the velcro Command Strips really helped get it level, you can unstick them and adjust as needed. It all fell into place, and I was thrilled to spend less than $100 to make such a huge impact on my room!
Chic Metallic Headboard
The Chic Metallic headboard was another ‘on a whim’ idea that we had in our college apartment. My roommate and best friend, Bella, saw how big of a difference the DIY headboard made in my room, and wanted one for her room as well! Naturally we got to work. Again for less than $100, we made a beautiful, renter friendly headboard!
The premise of the Chic Metallic Headboard is basically the same as the Jute Placemat Headboard, but with a few tweaks!
We picked up some 12x10 photo frames from the Dollar Tree, for $1 EACH! 12 was the perfect number, again for a queen size bed. We got the non-textured ones, as we planned to paint over them! While we were there, we picked up some more hot glue sticks and a medium size cardboard box. The extra material we picked up was spray paint. It had to be one that could stick to the glass of the photo frames, this ended up being the Rust-Oleum Universal Metallic Spray Paint in the color Rose Gold. This paint was a primer and paint in one!
We laid out the photo frames in two rows of six. See pic for reference! Once we found the layout we liked, all vertical, we flipped it all to be face down to attach the cardboard backing. We used a bit more glue on this headboard, it was more rigid and needed the support! After gluing them all together, we let it dry overnight.
The next day, we set it up outside to prepare for spray paint. Once we were happy with the cleanliness of the frames, we put on the first coat of paint. In the Florida humidity, this took a bit longer than it would somewhere else! All in all, we did about three light layers of the metallic spray paint. We let this dry inside as the humidity would have added days to the project!
After we were sure it was completely dry and the paint had hardened, we hung it, again with velcro Command Strips!