The BILLY bookcase is IKEA's most popular flatpack for good reason. It perfectly encapsulates the brand's Scandi simplicity, offering a shelving system for every home that seamlessly integrates into any style. That said, it also offers endless opportunities for customization, and we've found one of the most beautiful examples that looks so chic and sophisticated it could pass as a period feature.
Built-in, library-style shelving is high up on most people's wishlists, but the cost of going bespoke can be eyewatering. If you want to get the look for less, an IKEA Billy Bookcase Hack is the obvious answer, and we've found a clever yet relatively simple DIY that you can adapt to your heart's desire. With a lick of brown-gray paint and some decorative trim, this savvy homeowner turned her bare wall into a delightfully eclectic storage display, and she says it's a surprisingly straightforward build. Itching to recreate the look in your own home? Here's how it's done.
Eager to give her partner's home office a revamp, DIY aficionado Leah Hodson (@thestanleydiary) turned to one of the best IKEA hacks to create stylish shelving that stretched up the entire wall. "We were left four BILLY bookcases by the previous owners, and I knew straight away that I had to do an IKEA hack with them," she explains. "I've always loved the idea of having a huge bookcase in my husband's home office."
Of course, this meant Leah was able to skip the building of the flatpacks, cutting straight to integrating the four shelving units into the existing space. If you need to purchase the bookcases for your own project, be sure to measure out the length of your wall and configure it with various-sized units as needed.
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Once positioned to line the wall, Leah then primed each flatpack with Zinsser's BIN primer - available at Amazon - ready for painting. "I've found from previous experience that this is the best primer when painting on laminated surfaces," she explains. "Once primed, I screwed the bookcases together before painting them with two layers of 'Mouse's Back' by Farrow and Ball, then varnishing with two layers of quick-drying varnish. A little tip to prevent brush stroke marks when painting is to add Floetrol to it - the bookcase looks like it was spray painted!"
To give the shelving idea that finished look, Leah also added pine molding on the front and sides of the units. "I also added coving on the top, securing it with an adhesive such as 'Hard as Nails'," she adds. It's this attention to detail that gives it the end result the elevated period feature quality, but not everything went perfectly to plan. "I tried scribing the coving on the bookcase so that it would butt up nicely against the room's coving, but failed terribly," explains Leah. "It looks a tad funny from the side."
To bring some closed storage into the picture and some varied height to her built-in, Leah then purchased a BRIMNES cabinet from IKEA to complete the wall. "I filled the pre-drilled holes for the handles and primed, painted, and varnished the same way as the BILLY bookcases," she says. "When it was all installed, I added a brass latch lock as an alternative to handles."
The finished wall-to-wall shelving looks so chic and sophisticated, and Leah's thoughtful styling brings plenty of color and character to the space. "I would have to say the bookcase is now the focal point of the room when you walk in," she says. "It's so majestic but also compliments all the different elements in the room perfectly." If you're in the market for some custom shelving to suit your space, why not make this nifty DIY your next weekend project?
