I have this bed and I love it. The thing is, it’s an Ikea bed. You know, the ones with the slats. I also really love the look of bed skirts and the two just don’t seem to mix. I’ve tried, but it always ends up being kind of a big mess and not looking quite right.
This is the bed in question. You can kind of see the sad and saggy cream colored bed skirt in this picture, although I tried to keep it out.
Now, one route is of course to make your own and figure it out that way, but I found a store-bought skirt that I loved and I was determined to make it work! Determined! It ended up being fairly easy once I figured out my plan of attack. Here’s how you do it if you ever find yourself in a similar predicament:
Here are the slats that make the base of the bed and that the mattress sits on top of. There are two sets just like this that run side-by-side. They’re attached together with a heavy ribbon and they stretch nicely into place on the bed. That stretchy ribbon design will get you nowhere with your bed skirt. Nowhere! Well, no. It will get you somewhere, but it’s a place where you get so frustrated that you end up yelling at family members just for breathing too loudly in the next room while you’re trying to figure this out. And then the whole thing falls apart and you need to start over again. You know what I’m talking about.
So I freed those slats from their ribbon jail! Suddenly, it was all no problemo.
Before you get to this point, I’ll note that you should vacuum under your bed so as not to get your new bed skirt all dusty. Then you’ll want to lay the skirt out in the middle of everything. The only thing holding it up at this point will be the rail down the middle and all the junk that you keep under your bed.
The next thing you need to do is take three of the wooden slats and slid them into place on the bed underneath the skirt, holding it up. Do this at the head of the bed, the foot, and the middle. The actual skirt part will come over the end of the slats and be pinned in place against the inside of the bed frame. You’ll repeat this on the other side too.
After that it gets really easy. The rest of the slats can just go in place over top of everything. The pressure of having them end to end on either side will pinch the skirt into place and keep it just where you want it. You can adjust it a bit here and there as you ad the slats, but it will mostly go right where it needs to.
The “on top” pieces just pinch the top of the skirt against the frame and allow you to keep it at a perfect length for your bed. Not too long, not too short.
And there you have it! A perfectly skirted bed, even when you never thought it was possible. Adding the mattress on top just keeps everything in place even better. I put the mattress back myself so it was pretty ugly. Lots of falling over and banging around, but the slats and the skirt didn’t budge. If yours looks like mine though, you may want to run an iron around it and gives it a little steam.
I have to say that this little discovery was pretty thrilling for me. I’m so happy I was able to get this bed and this skirt to play nicely together, when the new rug comes in, I just know that they’re all going to be the best of friends.
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.