Five Easy Ways to Hide Cords and Cables in Your Home

Despite the prevalence of wireless devices, wrangling cords and cables in the home is still a pain point for most people. If you own your home, you might be able to hide your wires inside the walls, but if you rent or simply don’t want to drill into or open up your walls, that isn't ideal. Besides, there are many much easier ways to hide them without needing to learn drywall repair.

Behind furniture

One of the easiest ways to hide your cables is to clip them behind conveniently placed furniture. Adhesive clips like these stick to the legs and backs of tables and consoles and secure all those wires in place. If you’re neat about it, you can magically make those wires invisible without touching your walls, and the clips can be removed any time if you change your layout or move to a new place.

You can also leverage a key piece of furniture: Your couch or sofa. Mounting a shallow shelf behind the couch (flush with the top of its back) or buying a narrow console table that fits behind it lets you attach wires underneath for perfectly hidden wiring. Plus, it adds a bit of storage to your space for an extra win.

Cable management boxes

If your cables only bother you when they explode into a mess in one spot (like where they have to leap off the floor to connect to your TV or computer), a cable management box is a decorative way to wrangle them without messing around with a large-scale organization project. You can find them in a variety of finishes and looks to match your existing style, and they keep all that cable chaos hidden from view with zero DIY work on your part.

Cable covers

If you need to run your wiring a fair distance around the room, paintable, no-drill cable covers will hide the wires and blend them into the background; once painted, these covers won’t be noticeable at all. You can also get “raceway” crown or baseboard molding that will hide your cables in a completely unnoticeable way, though they will require a bit more work to install. If you already have baseboards in the room, you can get quarter-round channels that mount right up against your existing trim for a seamless look.

Wall panels

A slightly more involved project doesn’t open up your walls, but does require a bit of DIY skill. You can add wall panels to hide cables and wiring:

• Wainscoting. A classic look, installing wainscoting isn’t terribly difficult as long as you’re patient when measuring and cutting. It doesn’t require opening the wall, but it does require some drilling, nailing, and sawing skills. The key here is to bump your wainscoting out about an inch from the wall with some one-inch furring strips to allow room for wires to run behind it, then cap it with some molding to cover the gap.

• Accent panels. You could also add an accent wall using a wall panel behind the television or your desk. Bump it out an inch from the wall and run your wires behind it for a neat, seamless look that adds some drama to the room. Wall panels can mimic wood, brick, stone, or tile, or simply be a pop of color in an otherwise neutral room.

Decor

Finally, the easiest, cheapest, and least invasive way to hide your wires and cables is to run them behind stuff you already have. A row of books or potted plants, for example, can provide ample camouflage for a few bundled wires. Anything that can sit on a shelf in a pleasingly curated way can hide some wires, no drilling or furniture re-arranging required.

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