Give Your Laundry Basket A Chic DIY Upgrade That You'll Actually Love Looking At

Plastic laundry hampers are one of the best ways to store and sort your clothes for laundering. Not only are they inexpensive, but unlike some other stylish laundry baskets, they are easily able to be cleaned and disinfected as needed. They can hold larger loads of dirty laundry and are often considered an odor-fighting laundry hamper that keep funky smells at bay. Plastic hampers, however, can often put a wrench in your design scheme since they can be quite plain or uninspiring despite their functionality. Thankfully, the internet is filled with ideas for giving these useful hampers a brand new look that completely fits your design style. With just some fabric, a glue gun, and some decorative accents, you can dramatically transform a boring plastic hamper into a chic piece of functional décor.

This DIY can be a very budget friendly way to add enormous impact and style wherever you stash your laundry, including bathrooms, bedrooms, closets, or dedicated laundry rooms. You may even already have scrap fabric lying around that would be perfect for this DIY. Lidded plastic laundry hampers are available from numerous retailers and can be purchased for anywhere from $20 to $30. Because they are inexpensive, you can use several in your home to keep you organized and add function. 

There are a number of fabrics that work wonderfully for this project, including woven rugs, upholstery fabric, cotton, vinyl, or inexpensive muslin. You can also use peel and stick wallpaper over hampers to add a bit of color and pattern and hide the underlying plastic. Most tutorials cut the fabric to size for wrapping the width of the basket, with another smaller piece to cover the top. You can easily secure the fabric along the seams with hot glue applied directly to the surface. Once the fabric is in place, use the glue gun to add more accents, be it fringe, lace trim, embroidered appliques, or other decorative elements that match your aesthetics.

For a shabby chic makeover, use a pastel cotton fabric, lace embroidered flowers, and tulle trim. For a more glam look, use a stretch velvet over the hamper and add some painted gold legs to the bottom. For a natural look that rivals woven baskets but still includes the plastic liner, use natural or colored rope woven around the perimeter from top to bottom. For cylindrical baskets that have an open weave, you can even use the existing framework to wrap the rope or twine through the basket itself to make it look like a real woven basket at a budget-friendly price.