Creative Ways to Hide Wires

When decorating a room for style and function, one common problem we all face is how to hide those unsightly electrical and media cords. Unless you are willing to spend tons of money to have electrical outlets built into your flooring in strategic places, you'll soon be trying to find a clever way to disguise the wires that power your devices.

A decorative way to cover up your electrical cords is to use fabric cord covers. These covers come in an array of colors and sizes and simply slip over the cord or bundle of cords you wish to cover. Fabric cord covers usually have a scrunchy design that expands and contracts like an accordion -- which almost gives them a ruffle-like appearance. Although they do cover your cords, some people don't like to use them because they feel they draw more attention to the cords by encasing them in a decorative fabric.

You can purchase white or other color cable raceways and ducts to enclose your wires along the walls or floors. One creative way to make these items blend into your decor is to mount a white raceway or duct to hold your wires slightly above your existing baseboard. Then paint the space between the white raceway or duct and your baseboard with the same color trim paint. The enclosures will look like they are part of the baseboard molding.

If you have a large area rug that skirts the outer perimeter of your room or long draperies on the walls, you might be able to use them to creatively hide the wires for your electrical items. Simply tuck the wires behind the long draperies or under the edge of your rug. This works well if your rug hugs the walls of your room and doesn't get a lot of foot traffic -- as repeatedly walking on wires under a rug (no matter how thin) could cause the wires to fray and become a fire hazard.

If you want to be truly creative in hiding the wires that run along the walls of your room, try your hand at building decorative baseboard wiring fences. Cut pieces of picket fence in 4-inch lengths to attach to the front of your existing baseboards. Space them about 1/4 inch or more apart and run the wires in the space you create between the wall and the pickets to hide your wires. Alternately, you can attach tall, decorative lengths of molding to the front of your baseboard and cut notches out where you want to bring wire in and out from the channel made by your decorative wiring fence.