The Creative IKEA Hack Nate Berkus & Jeremiah Brent Used To Transform A Tiny Space

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Storage furniture doesn't have to be ugly, and it doesn't have to be hidden away, either. When you're dealing with a small space, there probably isn't room to hide storage racks in a closet anyway. In a feature with People, Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent embrace the basics for their Montauk guest house, a small but stylish cottage they built in the backyard of their beach home. The entire point was to "reuse and rethink things you can buy really inexpensively," Brent says in the People piece. They show off a simple hack that turns an IKEA wardrobe into an earthy style. Jazzing it up used some leftover materials from their New York City townhouse, plus a few new finds.

The wardrobe in their project looks like a PAX/BERGSBO wardrobe combination, though you could use similar structures in your small space. The awesome upgrade they incorporated to make the wardrobe more stylish was simply pasting on some leftover woven wallpaper with an earthy, somewhat burlap vibe, plus adding driftwood handles from Etsy. They dressed up the wardrobe a little more by hanging some shell necklaces on the door handles. The end result is a beachy, coastal vibe, which makes sense for a guest house for a beach home. 

To incorporate Berkus and Brent's ideas into any tiny living space, start with a plain Ikea wardrobe or storage unit. IKEA offers quite a few variations of their PAX wardrobe with doors, so there's bound to be one that fits well in your space. Even if the wardrobes are plain white and the rest of the room is, too, things don't have to stay bland. You could add squares of wallpaper to the front of the wardrobe as Berkus and Brent did, but that's not your only option. Cover the entire door panels with wallpaper to make it look almost like you've wallpapered the room. It's a stunning option that could look good in a rental situation, too, if the wardrobe is yours. Peel-and-stick wallpaper is another option that lets your ideas stay in place without being permanent.

If you aren't really in the mood for a coastal color scheme, you can choose something that works better for you. A geometric design that plays off of other colors in the room could really make the place pop with personality. Whatever style you go for, choose wardrobe handles that pair well with the style. Incorporate other elements that suit your tastes, too. For instance, you could whip up a DIY wine cork mat and use it either as a door mat or as a wall hanging. It could even be used to line the space behind a bookcase, giving it a little more personality. Upcycling is the name of the game in Berkus and Brent's ideas for their small space, and it could be just what your home needs too.