Make a Fabric Headboard

Don't have a headboard? No problem!

To make your own you'll need:
-a piece of plywood cut the width of your bed and the height you prefer
-piece of foam 3-5" think cut the size of your plywood
-fabric that is at least a foot larger on all sides than your piece of plywood
-staple gun and staples
-heavy duty picture hanging cleat (see pictures below)

FYI: Bed sizes
Twin 39"wide
Double/Full 54" wide
Queen 60" wide
King 76" wide
CA King 72" wide

Once you know the width of your plywood, decide the height. It may depend on your room size, pillow sizes, etc. but I would recommend a headboard that's at least 3 feet tall. That way, you'll be able to clearly see it even with pillows in front of it.

To make your headboard...

1. First, lay the fabric on a table, or another flat surface, face down. The fabric I used wasn't wide enough, so my mom sewed three pieces of fabric together and sewed them together vertically to achieve the width I needed for a queen sized bed. You can hardly see that it's several pieces of fabric sewed together because she did such a great job matching up the pattern of the fabric, and you can do the same.

2. Center the foam on top of the fabric and then the piece of plywood on top of the foam.

3. Pull the fabric as tightly as possible and staple it to the plywood with a staple gun. It's best to have one person holding the fabric and another person pulling and stapling the fabric on the opposite side.

4. Determine where you want your headboard to hang on the wall. I would recommend pushing your mattress and frame against the wall and marking where the center of the bed hits the wall. Now hold the headboard over the mattress and let it rest just over the mattress. Make a mark on the wall above the headboard. Now hang your cleat about a foot or so down from the mark you made on the wall where the headboard was. Make sure it's centered (use the mark you made just over the mattress) and hang your cleat. Now hang the other half of the cleat on the back of your headboard. Make sure the screws are heavy duty, but don't use anything too long. You don't want puncture your headboard on the other side or poke someone if they're leaning against it.

5. Connect the cleat and push your mattress under the headboard!


The bottom left piece will attach to the back of the headboard, about half way down. The top right piece should hang on your wall and be positioned so that it hangs directly over your bed.

Once the pieces are connected they should look like this (below):