Do you want to cover your open wardrobes or shelves? Find the solution that's right for you

Open-faced wardrobes, as well as shelves used in many rooms of the house to furnish them and to tidy up, are an ever-popular trend in interior design. From an aesthetic point of view, they are light and airy, and so they do not weigh down the decor and seem to create more space. Furthermore, they often have very basic shapes - the kind that manages to integrate into many different furnishing styles.

All these advantages make them a great favorite over traditional cabinets with doors. However, there are also some aspects that can cause an issue in the long run: any object placed on the shelves is always in plain sight, so you can't afford let a mess develop; and above all, the lack of any covers exposes all surfaces and items placed on the shelves to dust and dirt. So how do we get around this problem without changing the furniture? Just cover them up with some practical and tasteful furnishing solutions - see some examples below:

The first solution, easier and really flexible for all types of open-face furniture, are curtains. If the surface to be covered is very large, use curtains with a light fabric and a neutral color or which perfectly matche the shades and colors used for the rest of the furniture and the room's decor.

Combining a few shelves and a curtain to cover everything up will also allow you to create closets at the end of a corridor or in places where it was perhaps difficult to find the piece of furniture of the exact right shape and size.

Curtains do not distract from any lights which are installed to illuminate the various shelves.

Curtains are a perfect solution for wardrobe compartments created in a niche in the wall, and you could also use curtains made with heavier fabrics, or decorated with trimmings (if they are not too gaudy).

In the middle of a white and neutrally furnished room, on the other hand, you can also choose curtains whose fabrics are decorated with colored prints of various kinds.

Then there are the more sober options such as taut (rigid) curtains, which are a cross between the softly draped ones  and real shutters or doors.

In addition to sliding the curtain horizontally on a rod that runs along the top of the cabinet to be covered, you could also close an open cabinet on several sides, by installing a circular or square support that hangs from the ceiling (as is done for certain shower stalls).

Coming to the more sash-like alternatives, there is the option of installing sliding doors, such as the popular barn doors.

And there is no lack of solutions with a more refined design such as wooden panels with thin bars that slide on almost invisible tracks.

There is no shortage of ideas to adapt wood panels (including plywood) to IKEA's most famous open furniture models, as can be seen here.

And then you might even want to build custom-made, DIY doors, perhaps with a wooden frame and with a lighter Vienna-style straw screen.

Have you ever installed similar solutions for your open-faced furniture?