How to Turn an Old Door into a Beautiful Headboard

I’m sharing everything you need to know to turn an old door into a gorgeous headboard that you’d never guess used to be a door.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on updating my son’s room. It’s been looking pretty sad since we moved in and one of my first priorities was to make him a new bed and finally get his mattress off the floor!

When I saw this door at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore I knew it would be perfect as a headboard. Even better, it was only $20. To be honest, it was that great minty green that grabbed my attention first, but beneath the paint, this really is the perfect shape for a headboard.

Why use a door for a headboard? Well, if you find the right door, it’s a cheaper and easier way to create a solid wood headboard with nice detailing. If I tried to recreate this door from raw wood, it would cost much, much more than $20. Plus, I always love reusing and repurposing things. This door was begging for a new life – so why not as a headboard?

In this post I’m sharing everything you need to know to build a gorgeous headboard from an old door including how to choose a great door, how to figure out the perfect width, and how to finish it off with some simple trim.

I’ve also created a full video tutorial for this project for those who prefer video. You can find the video at the bottom of this post.

Along with this headboard, I also built a nice wooden bed frame to use with it. You can find the full step-by-step tutorial for the DIY bed frame here.

This post contains affiliate links which means if you make a purchase after clicking a link I will earn a small commission but it won’t cost you a penny more.  Click here to see my full disclosure policy.

Materials

• Old door of your choosing
• Two 2x2x8 boards – for the legs. You can use furring strips for this which are only a couple of dollars each, just be sure to look for straight pieces without a lot of blemishes.
• One 1x4x8 board – for the top trim. A furring strip will also work for this.
• One piece of ornamental molding – I used this colonial shoe molding for my headboard
• Wood glue

Materials used for the Paint Wash Finish

• Tan paint – for adding a paint wash to the door. I used Dixie Belle Chalk paint in French Linen and Waverly chalk paint in the color fawn. (The Waverly paint is no longer available but Dixie Belle Mud Puddle is a very similar color.)
• Medium brown water-based stain – to use as a base coat on raw wood under the paint wash. I used Behr water-based stain in the color English Chestnut
• Water-based top coat – to protect the finish. I used matte Varathane water-based polyurethane

Recommended Tools

• Circular saw – for cutting your door to the correct width
• Miter saw – for adding angles to the top molding and also if you want to taper the legs
• Kreg Jig – for attaching the legs to the door using pocket holes. I use this small, inexpensive Kreg Jig and it is perfect for beginners. (You can also make a headboard like this without using pocket holes if you prefer.)
• Hammer and finishing nails or nail gun – for attaching the trim to the door. This is the nail gun I have and love. It is easy to use and doesn’t require an air compressor.

What type of door works best

I’ve seen quite a few door headboards at this point and some look amazing while others look an awful lot like someone randomly hung a door on their wall. And I’ve noticed that one of the biggest differences between the two is what type of door was used.

The key is to look for a door that is symmetric when turned horizontally. That could be planked door, a door with full-width panels like mine, or even a flat panel door.

However, traditional 6 panel doors with two small square panels at the top and two sets of longer panels below won’t work well. They aren’t symmetric and still look very much like a door even when turned horizontally.

Measurements for different size beds

Different size beds obviously require different size headboards. You can easily trim most doors down to be the correct size. Just remember that you’ll probably need to trim a bit of the extra width from each end of your door to keep the overall design symmetric.

Below I’ve listed the typical headboard widths for each size bed. Each of these widths is 3″ wider than a standard mattress. You can always make your headboard a few inches wider than these dimensions, but I wouldn’t recommend going smaller.

Headboard Widths:

• Twin: 38″
• Double/Full: 57″
• Queen: 63″
• King: 79″
• California King: 75″

These headboard widths coordinate perfectly with my DIY wooden bed frame for anyone who wants to use the two together.

These measurements are for the total width of your headboard. If you are adding any kind of posts or trim to the sides of your door, you will need to cut your door a bit smaller to accommodate for that.

For my own headboard, I am using 2×2 posts to frame either side of my door. Those two posts add 3″ of width to my headboard (since 2x2s are actually only 1.5″ wide), so I cut my door to 60″ to make a 63″ headboard.

If your door isn’t quite long enough for your headboard, you can always add slightly wider boards to each side to get the size you need.

How to Make a Door into a Headboard

Choosing a finish for your headboard

The first step is to clean your headboard really well.

After cleaning, the next steps really depend on how you plan to finish your headboard. You might luck out with a nice, stained door in great shape, but there’s a good chance that your door has been previously painted. If so, you have three main options:

• Leave the original finish as is. If you love the look of your door as is, consider yourself lucky! You can skip ahead to cutting it to size.
• Paint (or repaint) your door. If you are painting over an existing painted finish, I highly recommend starting with a coat of a good oil-based primer first. Many older doors were painted with oil-based paints and using an oil-based primer will prep the door well so that you can then paint it with any type of paint you want. If you want to know more, I have a post with everything you need to know about painting over oil-based paints.
• Strip the old finish. If you want a stained wood look, you’ll need to strip off the old paint. And sometimes if there are lots of built-up layers of paint, it’s a good idea to strip them off even if you are planning to repaint, so you can start with a clean, even surface.

I chose to strip my own door. Even though I was originally drawn to the chippy green paint, upon further inspection, the finish was stained and really didn’t look all that great up close. But since I felt bad getting rid of the charming green, I stripped the other side of the door instead which was a plain white.

Warning: Before scraping, sanding, or stripping old paint, it’s always a good idea to check for lead paint. You can buy inexpensive lead paint test kits that will let you know within seconds whether lead paint is present. If lead paint is present, removing the paint yourself could be harmful to your health.

Stripping the old paint

Stripping old paint used to really intimidate me, but it’s actually a pretty simple process. And watching that old paint scrape right off is oh so satisfying.

I used CitriStrip to strip my door. CitriStrip uses less harsh chemicals than some other strippers, but it’s still important to work in a well-ventilated area and wear gloves and a mask.

Want more details on stripping paint? I have a full step-by-step tutorial for stripping old paint from furniture coming soon.

Once the old paint is removed, you are ready to either stain or paint your door with the finish of your choice.

Filling in holes and scratches

Before you start staining or painting your door, you might want to fill in any holes and scratches with wood filler first.

Old doors tend to get pretty banged up and they also often have small holes where the hinges were attached and huge holes where the doorknobs and locks were. Whether or not you choose to fill all of these is really up to you.

The easiest way to deal with the large doorknob hole is to place it at the bottom of your headboard. That way it will be covered by pillows.

If you are painting your headboard, you may want to go ahead and fill any other holes with wood filler and sand it smooth. If you are staining your door, just keep in mind that it’s very difficult to stain wood filler to truly match the rest of your wood, so if the holes don’t stand out too much, it might be better to just leave them as is.

Adding a paint wash

After stripping all the old paint off my door, I discovered I really didn’t love the look of the wood underneath. Womp, womp.

It wasn’t terrible by any means, but it just wasn’t what I was hoping for.

Pretty much every project has one of these moments at some point, where things just aren’t working out the way you had planned.

At first I figured I would just paint over it, but then I realized this was the perfect time to try using a tan paint wash.

A paint wash is basically a way to use watered-down paint to change the look and color of wood while still letting the wood grain shine through. It’s similar in some ways to using wood stain, but it’s a lot easier to apply and works especially well on cheaper woods that don’t always take stain well.

I love paint washes because they’re really easy to tweak so you can get exactly the color you want and they help hide imperfections and unevenness in the natural wood.

For my paint wash, I used two paint colors: Waverly chalk paint in the color fawn (tan) and Dixie Belle chalk paint in the color french linen (light greige). (The Waverly chalk paint I used is no longer available, but really, any tan paint will work the same.)

First, I mixed my tan paint with water. I didn’t measure anything but I used approximately one part paint to one part water. If you want a more subtle color change, you can use less paint and more water.

To apply the paint wash, quickly brush a thin layer of the watered down paint onto your surface, working in one section at a time. Then immediately after applying the paint, wipe off the excess using a clean rag. You can control how transparent the finish is by wiping off more or less of the paint.

Allow the paint to fully dry between coats.

I wasn’t totally sure how I would like the paint wash over this wood, so I started by only painting one half of the door. But I pretty quickly decided I was loving the paint wash, so I painted the other half to match.

I applied two coats of the tan paint wash and then one final coat that was half the tan paint and half the greige paint to lighten it up.

I absolutely love how this finish turned out. It toned down all the things I didn’t love about the bare wood of this door while still letting the wood grain shine through.

(Later in the project, I needed to match this finish on raw, unpainted pine and it turns out that was also way easier than I anticipated. I have more details about that below.)

Once my paint was dry, I applied two coats of matte Varathane water-based polyurethane to protect the finish.

Cutting your headboard to size

You will probably need to cut your door down to be the correct width for a headboard. (You can find the correct size for your own headboard above).

When cutting down your headboard, make sure to cut even amounts from each end so that your final headboard looks symmetric. A circular saw works well for cutting your door to the correct size.

Cutting the headboard legs and trim

The final steps are adding the legs and wood trim to your door. This trim is a small detail that really makes a huge difference in helping your headboard look like a beautiful piece of furniture rather than just an old door.

As I mentioned earlier, I used 2×2 boards to make legs for my headboard. I like the slim silhouette of 2×2 legs and this size also works perfectly with the DIY bed frame I made to go with this headboard, but you could add chunkier legs if you prefer.

I cut my legs 54.5″ long. This is a nice height for a headboard so it shows up well behind your pillows but isn’t looming over the bed.

To add a bit of extra detail, I cut the bottom of my bed legs at an angle. I have more details about how to do this in my bed frame tutorial.

I also added a piece of ornamental shoe molding along with a 1×4 board to finish off the top of my headboard. I cut my shoe molding at an angle on each end and cut the 1×4 to be slightly longer than the shoe molding.

Paint washing the trim

Now it was time to try to make my brand new trim boards match the paint wash finish on my old door. I was nervous that this was going to be a nightmare, but it actually turned out to be pretty easy to do.

First, I stained my boards with one coat of Behr water-based stain in the color English chestnut. It’s important to use a water-based stain for this so you can move on to adding the paint wash as soon as the stain dries.

While you can paint over oil-based stains, you’d need to wait a few days before adding the paint wash to make sure the oil-based stain is 100% dry.

Once the stain dried, I added one coat of the tan paint wash (Waverly chalk paint in fawn + water), followed by one coat of the greige paint wash (Waverly chalk paint in fawn + Dixie Belle chalk paint in french linen + water).

And that’s it. It was a nearly perfect match!

Attaching the legs and trim

To attach the legs to the door, I drilled pocket holes using my Kreg jig in the back of the door and then used wood glue and pocket screws to secure each leg to the door.

If you don’t have a pocket hole jig and plan to do more building projects, I highly recommend you get one. This one is pretty inexpensive and a pocket hole jig makes any kind of building project a million times easier and more sturdy.

But if you don’t have a pocket hole jig and don’t do enough projects to justify buying one, you could also screw straight from the outside of the legs into the door. Just be sure to use 2.5″ long screws and also use wood glue. These legs are going to be supporting the weight of your headboard so they need to be secure.

The last step is attaching the trim pieces to the top of the door using wood glue and nails.

The finished headboard

Here’s my finished headboard.

I absolutely love how this turned out. To be honest, it looks absolutely nothing like what I originally envisioned when I first saw this door at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, but I love how beautiful the finished bed is.

It looks absolutely beautiful against my map wall and you’d better believe I’ll be using this finish again!

Here’s the before and after – talk about a transformation!

Video

Want to see this makeover in action? Just hit play below to watch my Youtube video showing the whole process.

If you love repurposed furniture projects like I do, you can find all of my favorites here: 27 Genius Repurposed Furniture Ideas for Every Room in the House