DIY Wallpapered Bookcase IKEA Hack

*Today’s post was made possible by Fancy Walls, and features gifted product for the purposes of a candid review. All opinions are my own.

I’ve inadvertently been playing a massive game of musical chairs furniture in our home lately, from bookshelves and desks, to sofas and rugs. I’m sure you know by now that nothing stays the same for long in our home, and I have a lot of fun up-cycling furniture and then passing them along to friends, family, or other enthusiastic secondhand shoppers in our area thanks to Facebook Marketplace. Case in point, the old bookcase in my home office. I actually swapped out the one you see pictured in today’s post for a new wooden one that better suits the evolving aesthetic of my office, but before that, I tackled a quick DIY project to make the old white shelf really pop.

To bring you up to speed in case you’re new around here, back at the end of spring I teamed up with a certain “Big Box” furniture company to makeover my office. I had received a tall, thin white bookcase as part of that collaboration, and while I genuinely loved the outcome of that room design, I felt like the bookshelf could stand to have a little extra personality added to it. My idea was to fill some parts of the shelving and drawer fronts with peel-and-stick wallpaper to bring in a little more pattern and color, and for this project I turned, as always, to my friends at Fancy Walls to take advantage of their awesome line of edgy, cool wallpapers.

The especially cool thing about this project, though, is that I didn’t actually have to order anything new! Instead, I decided to make good use of the wallpaper scraps pile that I keep stocked in our basement from past wallpapering projects. Remember when I wallpapered our hall bathroom, flat panel doors, entryway, dining room trim, and kitchen? Well, because of those projects, I had plenty of scrap wallpaper in storage that I thought might be big enough to cover what I needed to on my plain white bookcase.

After holding up a few scraps to see which one I liked best, I chose a pattern called “Neutral Geometric,” which is what I used on the doors in our kitchen last fall. The scraps I had were big enough that I only needed to make a couple of quick cuts, and would negate the need to splice together any panels to cover the largest surface area behind the bookcase shelves. I also thought that the largely abstract pattern (which had very little repeat) might look a little less busy behind the accents I later used to style the shelves with.

From there, it was as easy as measuring the surface to be covered, transferring those measurements to my wallpaper scrap, and cutting it out. I usually tell you to cut your wallpaper panels extra large so that you can trim off any excess, but this project is a little different in that it’s best to cut your panel to the exact size you need. That’s because the delicate interior surfaces of a typical bookcase like the one I used could end up ripping if you have to peel back excess trimmed wallpaper or reposition it. This is why it’s best to cut your panel to the exact height and width of your bookcase backer board, and stick it in place without the intent to trim. The same goes for the drawer fronts. You may even want to cut your wallpaper panel just a hair smaller than the dimensions of your bookcase surfaces, that way you have more wiggle room and almost no need to trim off excess wallpaper.

The new pattern and color along the back of the shelves and on the drawer fronts make this bookcase feel so much more special and unique, I think. It’s now a one-of-a-kind piece that stands out in any space. Click over to my Instagram today to see this bookcase project come to life in video form, and let me know what type of pattern you would have chosen for your own space. Did you prefer one of the other scraps that I held up and photographed in front of my bookcase? I think the blue pattern from our kitchen project would have looked really nice, but I was worried that I didn’t have quite enough to cover the bookcase, so it ultimately got cut (pun unintended). Now, on to my next wallpaper project! Any guesses what it will be?