11 Easy Ikea Ivar Room Divider Hacks & Ideas

Whether you are trying to divide up a student room share or are creating zones in your family room, a room divider comes in very handy.

These Ikea Ivar room divider hacks and ideas will give you options to create a stunning room divider yourself without spending too much.

There is a big range of styles and solutions that you can easily use to turn Ivar shelving into useful, stylish room dividers.

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Cane Webbing Covered IVAR Room Divider

Source: Ikea

Starting off with an idea from Ikea themselves. This gorgeous cane webbing-covered room divider is a great natural way to create folding screens.

They have simply fixed cane webbing onto Ivar side units and then added some small brass hinges to connect them together.

For a great tutorial on fitting cane to IVAR side panels have a look at this September Edit post.

Fabric-Covered Ikea IVAR Folding Screen

Source: Helen Hou-Sandi

This is a really simple way to create roomd dividers with Ikea Ivar panels. All you need is some fabric and staples.

Of course, with this, you can customise it any way you like with your own choice of fabric. I’m imagining a nice bit of tweed fabric to fit in nicely with our cosy front room.

Macrame IVAR Room Divider

Source: My French Twist

Now, this might involve a bit more hard work but think of it as a challenging project you can be proud of when you’re finished. It will also give you a room divider that would be a talking point in any room!

All you need is some macrame cord, which you can get in various colours!

Once you get into the macrame craft there is an infinite number of designs you could use to decorate these room dividers, or just copy this design!

DIY Sunburst Pattern IVAR Room Divider

Source: Schere Leim Papier

Dust off your woodwork skills for this one! We love the sunburst pattern they’ve created here to turn the simple Ivar side units into a bright, dramatic addition to any room.

You don’t have to stick to the design they have created here. Why not come up with your own repeatable pattern to fill the gaps in the Ivar frame? You could simply get some 8mm dowel and fit it into the little holes that are already drilled into the uprights.

It doesn’t have to be complicated if you’re not used to crafting!

Paper Screen Room Divider

Source: Ikeahackers

A room divider doesn’t need to be a folding screen. This fixed screen is a great way to use the Ivar side units to semi-permanently divide up a room.

What I love about this hack is that it’s very simple. They have screwed five panels together and then taped wallpaper over one side. Of course, you need a way of stabilising it to make sure it doesn’t fall over, which they have done by adding a floor-to-ceiling stud at one end.

This works great if you are dividing up a rental space or if you have an open-plan room that you want to zone.

Ikea IVAR Solid Wood Room Divider

Source: Ikea

When you have Ivar side panels there are so many options you can choose to fill the gaps. Even just by fixing solid pieces of plywood and creating an all-wood solid screen.

You can get 3mm plywood pretty cheaply and even have it cut up for you at big box stores or timber merchants. No need to cut it to the size of a single gap, just cut it to the length of the whole Ivar side unit and pin it on with panel pins.

Obviously, you can then stain it or paint it to give the finish you want.

Stained and Fabric-Covered Ikea IVAR Room Divider

Source: Ikeahackers

Another fabric-based Ivar room divider hack, just to show the diversity of what you can create.

I love this dark-stained wood and Japanese-style fabric combo.

The great thing about these Ivar side unit hacks are that once you’ve got the frame joined together you have so many options with what to do to fill the gaps!

Full Ikea IVAR Shelving Room Divider

Source: Apartment Therapy

Let’s switch things up now and use the Ikea Ivar shelving units as they are meant to be. They make a wonderful room divider and storage/display combination.

If you didn’t want it to be completely open-shelved, you could add a fabric or wood backing to one side to give some privacy.

Another, More Colourful Shelving Room Divider

Source: @jessiefinds

Sticking to the multi-use theme of using the Ivar as shelving as well as a room divider, this gorgeous green creation shows you how you can create a stylish addition to any space.

We love how they’ve used colour here to tie everything together and make it look like it was well thought out as well as being a really practical way of dividing up the space.

Even the metal cross-struts at the back of the unit don’t look out of place!

Gold Sheet Vinyl Room Divider

Source: Fresh Ideen

This isn’t an Ikea IVAR project, I’m using some artistic licence to imagine what is possible!

Using gold vinyl sheeting, you could recreate this stunning gold room divider over some Ikea IVAR panels. You’d have to take care to get it nice and tight to get a good mirror finish, perhaps using staples to fix it. Alternatively, you could fix some hardboard over the panels and then stick self-adhesive gold vinyl to it.

I really like the black edging, which you could achieve either with paint or a strip of black ribbon to cover the staples.

Honeycomb Panel Inserts

Source: PeroWorx

I’ve gone a bit further left-field with this idea, but I think it’s a great way to demonstrate how you can begin to think about jazzing up your IVAR room dividers in various ways.

These honeycomb 300mm x 300mm (12″ x 12″) panels are the perfect size for a 300mm wide IVAR side panel. All you would need to do is glue or pin them on!

Admittedly this could add up to be quite pricey, but imagine how it would look if you spray-painted it all the same colour!


We really love how much you can do with a simple Ivar side unit and a bit of imagination!

There’s no need to spend a great deal on purpose-made room dividers when you can have some fun and create exactly what you want from an Ikea Ivar room divider hack and a bit of elbow grease!

Hopefully these ideas and hacks have helped you come up with your own designs for a folding screen room divider of your own.