Home DecorDIY Upholstered Headboard May 16, 2016 Thanks so much for all of the great feedback on our master bedroom, y’all! We love it and I’m so glad you guys do too. Today, I wanted to share the easiest tutorial ever for an upholstered headboard. I’d initially planned to do a really interesting shape, but after the wallpaper was up and other details were gathered, I realized it was just too much. I love the dark green of the headboard against the pattern of the wallpaper. But as I started picturing that in different shapes with cut-outs or curves, I couldn’t come up with a shape I liked against the pattern. I finally realized that a plain rectangle shape would really let the colors stand out and wouldn’t compete. That makes the tutorial even easier! We were on a tight timeline, so that’s a win too. We had to make headboard at night since we came down to the wire so much on this reveal. So forgive the dark photos, but you can definitely see what we did. Step 1: Create the Basic Headboard Frame We bought a standard piece of 4 x 8′ plywood. We used the 4′ width as our height. With that height, you could see headboard above the euro pillows, but it left room on the wall for artwork above. We have a queen bed, so we cut down the 8′ width to 60″. This gave us about 1″ of overhang on each side. Once you have that headboard part cut, you need to attach 2×4″ s to serve as the base. You can see we attached a board down each side of the headboard for support and then attached a cross-piece at the bottom. The cross-piece is the same width as the headboard. The side pieces, however, depend on the height of your mattress. We wanted the headboard to start 1″ or so below the top of the mattress so you didn’t risk seeing a gap. Our mattress is 30″ from the ground, so we knew those side pieces needed to be 65″ total (29″ for base and 36″ to span headboard). Definitely measure your mattress height to determine the height of these boards. Mattresses like a pillow-top, etc. are a lot thicker than others. Step 2: Attach Batting Now that we’re getting into attaching fabric, you really need two people for this. First, attach your batting. You can use batting that you buy at a craft store. I also love to use quilts or throws that I’m not using anymore. Batting that you purchase is usually thin, so you need a lot o fit. Using a quit or blanket really thickens up the padding. In this case, we used what we had, so we used a quilt that’s been sitting in the closet unused forever and then two thin layers of batting on top. Smooth it out really good and stretch it across the frame. We laid the headboard down for this part and then carefully stood it up with me holding one side stretched tight around the back. My husband used a staple gun to attach the batting on the back. Just make sure to go slow and have one person continually pulling it tight so you don’t have lumps. While this isn’t the top layer and some things will be hidden, lumps or ripples can affect how your finish fabric lays. Step 4: Attach Fabric Now that your batting is attached, lay your fabric out and figure out where you want it to go. For example, you want to make sure you have a good few inches all the way around to turn under and staple. But if you’re using a patterned fabric, you’ll want to make sure you like how the pattern is displaying on the headboard. A large-scale pattern especially may need some placement tweaking. We smoothed out our fabric really well and then went through the same process to attach it as the batting: I smoothed and stretched while Chris stapled. We took extra care on this step because we didn’t want any ripples or loose fabric on our finished headboard. Here, we just had the top and sides stapled and still had to trim and staple the bottom. You’ll see that we weren’t concerned with the back of it being pretty as it’ll never show. But if you want the back to look more finished, you cut a piece of your fabric slightly smaller than the back and attach it after the front is finished and tacked down in the back. This was such a simple tutorial, but I think the hardest part was getting the corners right. This velvet was really thick, so we had to really work with it to get it to lay like we wanted. If you have big lumps on the corners or fabric gathers, you’ll definitely see that from the front and sides in the room. And that completes our tutorial for the easiest upholstered headboard ever! When I’d planned to do cut-outs, we were going to notch out the shape with a jig-saw and then use the same steps to attach fabric, though it would’ve been much harder and tedious to get it to lay right over the shapes. This was a huge money-saver for us! I found this velvet for $3.00/yard a couple of years ago and just loved the color and texture. I’ve had it waiting for a special project like this! This headboard only took about 1.5 yards, so I have more leftover. Here’s the overall budget breakdown of this project: Boards & Plywood – $40 Fabric – used fabric I already had Batting & Quilts – used batting and quilts I already had that were just taking up space in the closet! TOTAL: $40 I’m always trying to save money where I can to hit our overall budget and to allow money to spent on things I don’t have or can’t DIY. This headboard was a huge help with that in this room! I’ll be sharing the entire budget breakdown of this room later this week once I’ve shared more details.
Austin says May 16, 2016 at 11:17 am LOVE this! My boyfriend is in (desperate) need of a headboard, and I feel like the two of us could knock this out together. Quick question: did you attach the headboard to anything (the wall/the bed frame), or did you just slide it behind the frame and push it up against the wall? Reply
Baileywife @ IrishmanAcres says May 16, 2016 at 12:51 pm I had that same question! Love that fabric btw!! ~kim Reply
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