Moving from a 3,200-square-foot house to a 1,400-square-foot home has made storage one of our top priorities. A few weeks ago we added two major storage upgrades that have already made a noticeable difference. We bought simple Ikea Bestå cabinets and while we still plan a few small hacks, we’re thrilled to have them assembled and in place. Together they amount to the equivalent of eight large cabinets of storage—funny to think our kitchen only has seven. The boxes had about a four-week wait, but delivery went smoothly.
They dramatically increased our usable storage—it’s basically like adding a closet in several spots around the house. The first installation is in our upstairs family room where we previously had a small console table under the TV. That table’s fabric baskets held our board games, but pulling a game from the bottom of a basket was always a hassle. Shelving that displays games so you can grab the one you want is far more practical.
We created an almost eight-foot-long glossy white console by joining two Ikea Bestå cabinets. Now every game is visible and reachable without emptying baskets, and photo albums, yearbooks, and keepsake books finally have a dedicated home.
Surprisingly, after nearly twenty years of shopping at Ikea, this was our first time using their Bestå line, which is designed with media storage in mind. The cabinet dimensions were almost a perfect fit for this spot and another area downstairs in our bedroom, which I’ll describe next.
We ordered four 47″ cabinet boxes—two for the family room and two for the bedroom. Each box has two customizable compartments where you can add shelves, doors, and legs. The long console you see is two cabinets joined together. Ikea supplies the brackets and hardware to connect them; we used their recommended legs so the installer could mount a single central leg between paired cabinets instead of two legs bunched together at the seam.
We also added discreet metal support legs on each cabinet to prevent any sagging over time.
If you prefer a floating look, Bestå boxes can be mounted to the wall with suspension rails to create a fauxdenza. For now we chose legs to keep the piece feeling like freestanding furniture and to avoid awkwardly integrating it with nearby raised paneling. We did, however, secure each box to the wall to prevent tipping. One simple future upgrade we may add is a countertop to hide the small seam between the two cabinets, but it hasn’t bothered us so far.
We’re considering swapping the doors for something more custom—perhaps a wood grain or a pop of color—using options from companies that make fronts to fit Bestå units. That said, we were pleasantly surprised by the stock high-gloss white doors we chose, and we’re in no hurry to change them.
The TV needs a small adjustment—it’s currently centered under the mini-split HVAC but sits slightly off-center relative to the Bestå console. It looks fine from the side, but straight on you can see it needs a minor nudge to the right. That’s an easy tweak we’ll do soon.
All our board games fit behind just one of the four doors. The other compartments hold puzzles, photo albums, extra books, and sentimental items that had been tucked away in various spots downstairs. Having everything in one convenient place is a huge relief.
One of the places those items used to live was a white printer/filing cabinet to the right of the bedroom fireplace. That temporary arrangement was just how things landed after our move, but installing Bestå cabinets there has made the space look more polished, symmetrical, and far better organized. (And yes, that’s our chihuahua napping in his favorite spot—totally unarranged.)
The bedroom cabinets are the same 47″ Bestå units, set apart on either side of the fireplace instead of joined. They fit the space nicely, including the height under the window. Although the straight-on photos make the chairs look like they block access, there’s plenty of clearance to open the doors and reach inside.
The right-side cabinet stores equipment like our DSLR, podcast mic, and tripod, along with spare picture frames we plan to use in a guest studio. The left cabinet is Sherry’s decor reserve—spare vases, sconces, cutting boards, shelf brackets, plant pots, candles, bowls, and other decorative items she rotates through the house.
Eventually we’ll probably hack the bedroom cabinets to look built-in, adding filler pieces, a continuous countertop, new hardware, and a baseboard that matches the room. For now, the clean, simple look is a dramatic improvement and gives us far more usable storage—something we’ve come to value a lot.
Our plans to fully integrate these cabinets are paused until we make progress on a closet build that will provide a terminating wall for the right-hand cabinet. Once the closet side wall is in place, the fireplace will be centered on that span, and the bedroom will gain a functional closet—another project we’re excited about.
We may hire a local carpenter to make custom door fronts for the closet and cabinets when the time comes. For now, we’re enjoying the immediate payoff: cleaner rooms, better symmetry, and a lot more organized storage. Also, I resisted the urge to make Bestå puns the whole time—so I guess you could say I didn’t let them get the best of me.
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