15 Aesthetically Pleasing Ideas to Hide Ugly Household Items
15 ways to decorate and disguise household eyesores to hide wires, conceal storage, and make every day housewares look aesthetically pleasing yet functional.
Warning: Totally random post ahead.
But this is one of the cool things I get questions on that I hardly think about… ALL of the “ugly” stuff in our house that is out of sight and out of mind.
How to Hide Eyesores in Your Home
Any time I share our living room in Instagram Stories, some of y’all ask, “Where are your TV cords?!”
Or “How do you function without a mud room in a small space?”
Or “How do you keep your house clean with kids?”
(P.S. Our messy house tour is proof we don’t actually have that one mastered, and that’s okay because we’re embracing this season with our kiddos.)
But for the other stuff, these are some of my favorite solutions for making “ugly” household items look aesthetically pleasing. I hope it helps y’all in some way.
1. Hide TV Cords With Cord Covers
(Some affiliate links are provided in this post. Full disclosure here.)
If you have a wall mounted TV with cords running everywhere in your living space, cord covers are the best things that make it suuuuper easy for blending cords into the wall. It’s the absolute best TV wall mount ideas to hide wires the easy way.
We wrapped our TV cords, stuck their sticky side to run along the top of our mantel and down into the corner to connect to a hidden outlet. Then we just painted the covers the same color as our wall so they disappeared.
Any time we have to hide TV wires, cord covers do the trick.
2. Hide Wires on Walls
Cord covers work perfectly for wall mounted light sources too! We used them as a better way to hide these plug-in wall sconces in this living room makeover to add more lighting in the space without hiring an electrician to hard wire them. They work well for wall mounted bedside lamps too.
They’re the perfect solution for hiding plug-in picture light wires underneath art. We used cord covers on this picture light on this home office makeover.
Reserving a little of your wall paint to brush onto the cord covers is a great way to make the covers blend in better. It looks much more clean than having messy wires all over the walls.
In a perfect world, hardwiring a wall art light is the best solution, but that’s not always easy (or cheap) to do.
3. Put Electronics in Grate/Glass Front Cabinets
This one really goes hand-in-hand with #1 but if you have a gaming system, a cable box, or any other electronic components disrupting an aesthetic room, store them in a cabinet or console with a grate or glass front to allow remote signals.
Our DIY window seat is one of my favorite projects ever because of this. It’s storage and extra seating all at once.
4. Organize Soaps on a Cake Stand or Vanity Tray
This little ceramic vanity tray helps us prevent scrub brushes, soaps, and other small items from scattering all around for simple yet functional kitchen sink decor. Cake stands and pedestals work well beside the sink too. And it’s cute!
For an added bonus, I like to use matching glass soap dispensers with aesthetic soap labels. This dish soap / hand soap set eliminates the guesswork.
5. Place Magnetic Frames on Breaker Boxes
Our breaker box is smack dab in the weirdest place behind our washing machine in our laundry room. To disguise it (while still making it visible in case of emergencies), we painted it the same color as the wall [Sherwin Williams Slate Tile].
I hung up these free printable vintage clothesline images with magnetic squares to make the frames easily removable while looking like a decorative element at first glance.
Completely covering a breaker box with a mirror, bookshelf, or any other object can be a code violation, so it’s important to at least keep the breaker box door partially visible in case of emergency.
6. Hide a Thermostat With a Glassless Picture Frame
Our thermostat was right in the middle of our hallway’s end wall, so to hide it, I took the glass out of a frame and hung it on top of the thermostat as a cover so it could still receive temperature readings to operate.
Any time we needed to adjust it, the frame easily lifted off.
If you don’t want to hang anything on top of a thermostat, you can hang art around it to distract the eye and make it appear less visible. You can also disguise it among multiple decorative objects in a gallery wall. Choose wall pieces that reflect your personal style.
Related: Mistakes Most People Make When Hanging Picture Frames
7. Hide a Smart Home Device on a Tray
To keep our Google Home Mini and Bluetooth speakers accessible on a daily basis but out of the way, we place them on a tray in the corner of our kitchen countertop so we can play music while we cook or get weather updates as we eat breakfast in the mornings. We add essential things like an olive oil dispenser bottle and salt and pepper grinders for kitchen storage.
It’s easy to hide smart home devices behind potted plants too.
8. Utilize Pegboard for Cleaning Supplies
We don’t have much cabinet storage to spare, so to keep our cleaning supplies orderly without disrupting the entire room, we utilize vertical storage on peg boards in our laundry space. These little baskets and pegboard hooks act as a great hanging organizer.
Or you can get an entire pegboard organizer set if you have a big pegboard wall that needs lots of help.
If you like to be extra with an aesthetic design style, this bamboo cleaning set is actually pretty.
9. Use Dispensers for Generic Soaps and Lotions
Showers can become very cluttered with random shampoo and body wash bottles.
These white minimalist shampoo bottles and black shower dispensers (we use as his / hers) not only look nice and prevent the look of clutter, they save space with their square shape so we can fit more bottles on a small shelf.
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When my youngest was a baby, we stored hand sanitizer and baby lotion in decorative soap dispensers on the diaper changing table in her nursery. A tiered basket is great for making burp cloths, essential oils, and diaper changing items easy to find in the middle of the night. You can see more about our nursery organization here.
In our laundry room, we keep our liquid detergent in a drink dispenser with apothecary jars for dryer sheets and loose change.
10. Use Plants for Hiding Cameras, Routers, and Smart Devices
If you need a “nanny cam” for your kids or have any routers or small electronics, tuck them beside or behind a small plant to keep them out of sight.
11. Use a Bench With Drawers for Shoe Storage
We don’t have a mud room in our house except for a couple of hooks in our laundry room to hang up jackets.
So as a helpful living room shoe storage idea instead, we use a bench with drawers beside our back door. It packs tons of shoe storage without taking up valuable floor space.
I found the bench for a steal on Facebook Marketplace and gave it a DIY reeded trim makeover. Keep an eye out for used storage benches. They’re definitely out there!
12. Hide Toys in Baskets
We keep most of the kids’ toys in their playroom or bedrooms, but for any small toys that make their way into the living room, we store them in a large basket on our fireplace hearth.
Just place a pillow or folded soft throw blanket on top to keep them easy to reach without being a focal point or for an even more concealable option, use a lidded basket.
It’s so simple, but a covered basket is the best toy storage for a living room that we’ve been doing for years. It’s an effective dog toy storage idea too, if you don’t have kids.
See that basket with the blanket on top sitting on the hearth below? It’s filled nearly to the brim with toys, but you can’t tell by just glancing at the room.
If you don’t have a fireplace, try a basket or small storage ottoman stored under a coffee table.
A coffee table with drawers or a lift top can help keep toys organized or readily accessible for storing your dog’s items too.
13. Store Pantry Items in Jars and Baskets
For dry ingredients we use often in recipes, we keep them all stored in these IKEA jars with these labels to decrease the packaging clutter and streamline our limited pantry storage. And it’s pretty!
We have used these jars for years, and they are great at staying airtight.
In our DIY pantry cabinet, these wire baskets are great at organizing food items so they remain clearly visible.
14. Use Aesthetic Toilet Brushes and Plungers
It’s such a small pet peeve, but I can’t stand seeing gross toilet brushes and plungers beside the toilet. It’s good to have them accessible though (especially so guests can avoid an embarrassing “Along Came Polly” clog situation).
This aesthetic toilet brush and pretty plunger are nice enough to leave visible in the bathroom. The best toilet plunger storage ideas are ones that don’t keep them completely out of sight but are still easier on the eyes than your standard plunger. Don’t require guests to hunt for it in a moment of need.
15. Tidy the Coffee Area With a Tray and Dispensers
It’s so nice having a tidy, peaceful coffee station to make a morning cup more enjoyable! I swear by it.
We put together this office coffee station idea for a conference room using a wooden tray, glass storage canisters for coffee and sugar, coffee syrup dispensers with labels, and a spoon rest. Incorporating coffee stations into work-from-home spaces is an amenity many interior designers use for improving the overall experience.
This divided basket is the best coffee station organizer that works well for holding tea bags, honey straws, and packets of Splenda for guests to easily serve themselves. You can put small individually sized cups of coffee creamer and K-cups in it too.
Aesthetic Household Items
Click any image in the scrolling gallery below for our aesthetic household favorites.
More Ways to Hide Household Items
- Vintage Light Switch Covers to Add Character to Any Room
- Bathroom Linen Closet Organization Ideas That Totally Work
- Scalloped Bowl Trend Alert + Thrifted Makeover with White Spray Paint
- Secret Toy Storage Solutions in the Playroom + the Chicest Amazon Storage Furniture
- Storage Solutions That Transformed Our Garage Makeover
Do you have any other solutions for hiding the “ugly” around your place?
I’m sure there are more around here, but it’s amazing how such little changes make a huge difference in our every day.
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