DIY designs have been taking the design world by storm! Especially with COVID-19 restricting us to our homes, building things purely with our hands, putting our sweat and grit into it, and watching a design roar to life in front of our eyes, has become the new pass time for many of us. But these DIY designs are more than just your run-of-the-mill products made using discarded water bottles, and paper! In fact, DIY furniture has been trending like crazy! These are innovative, fun to build, and highly functional furniture designs that cater to a variety of our needs, but are also really simple to put together. It’s the best of both worlds. From a DIY desk chair that doubles up as a doghouse to a flexible and modular furniture platform that doesn’t need any tools – each of these nifty designs will get your creative juices flowing, your hands moving, as well as definitely add some value to your life. Which of these unique DIY furniture designs would you try building at home?!

1. That Stool

Developed by Alondra Elizalde, That Stool is a flatpack DIY small stool designed with easy assembly to provide a practical means of having a stool anywhere, at any time. That Stool is comprised of only a few parts: a seat rest, five legs, a couple of star-shaped spindles, and some connecting nuts and bolts. All contained within a flatpack corrugated cardboard box, the parts of That Stool are easy to assemble with no additional hardware required. Following the imprinted instructions on the underside of That Stool’s top cover, users will first attach each leg to the corresponding screws on the star-shaped spindles. From there, connecting fasteners secure the legs and spindles in place, providing a sturdy bolster for the seat rest to mount.

2. The Xylo Living furniture system

For homeowners or renters who are opting for better quality furnishings, Xylo Living can be a great option. It’s a flexible platform that offers easy-to-assemble and disassembles furniture pieces. The furniture can be made using three-component types including Surface Pieces, Side Profile Pieces, and Connecting Slats. Xylo Living allows you to interchange components to make the piece you want. The Xylo Living furniture system boasts a modular design. When you’ve finished a chair, you can make more to build a couch. You can also make a side table, center table, dining table, or maybe a TV stand. For people who like to arrange their home layout and decors more frequently, you can turn to Xylo Living as you can quickly transform a piece of furniture into a new one depending on your need and the living space. All the items you’re making, when put together, will then result in a minimal aesthetic and unified look.

3. The KUR!O

The base of the shape-shifting, infinitely customizable shelf is its underlying grid, made from sandwiched wood-fiber boards. The cuts in the grid go as much as 20mm deep, allowing you to press-fit powder-coated steel panels into it. The steel panels come in a variety of colors, giving the KUR!O its uniquely vibrant appeal, and feature carefully-placed cuts that let individual panels interlock into each other. The 2mm thick panels are heavy-duty enough to take on large loads, making the KUR!O robust, despite the fact that there isn’t any screwing or gluing of parts. Each KUR!O even comes with a set of 8mm thick steel sticks or dowels that peg into the circular holes at the intersection of the cutouts. Plug a stick in and you instantly have yourself a series of hooks right beside your shelf spaces so you can both hang as well as place items on your KUR!O.

4. Giertz’s chair made for needy pets

Simon Giertz noticed time and time again that there weren’t any desk chairs on the market designed for people with small dogs whose preferred seated position was located anywhere on their owner’s body. In her uploaded YouTube video, A chair made for needy pets Giertz takes us through the construction of both the chair’s initial prototype and its final form. Using Fusion 360, Giertz created a 3D model of the pet chair. The model features an enclosed crate, the main dog door, footrest, stairs, and roof to also work as Giertz’s seat. Employing CNC milling to construct the chair’s top seat and roof, sidewalls, stairs, and front entryway, Giertz cut vertical ridges along the sidewalls to bend them around the radius of the chair. After mounting the pieces of plywood together to form the prototype’s planned structure, Giertz uses screws to attach them, but the finished prototype saw some improvements.

5. Wonder DIY

Wonder DIY has four different kits that come with cardboard elements that allow your child to create their own learning landscape. As they make their own ‘desks’, it gives them a sense of owning their space and creating a physical learning environment outside of school. Children can learn and be entertained as they build, re-build, and re-invent their learning space – playfulness and purpose make the core of these kits! “Adults are not the only ones who feel like their lives are out of control because of the coronavirus,” says Bosch. “Children are feeling it as well. These kits are designed to empower them and make them feel in control of their environment on some level.”

6. Aalo 2.0

Designed by a former Lexus Engineer who found himself shifting cities a lot, Aalo developed and evolved over time to become Aalo 2.0, the same product in essence, but designed to be stronger, made from finer materials, and work anywhere, including outdoors. Going a step further to make the range more durable, and therefore last for possibly a decade longer, Aalo 2.0 fine-tunes a few things while sticking to its original philosophy. The products come flat-packed, much like IKEA’s furniture would, but unlike the Swedish home-decor giant, Aalo 2.0 is also designed for ‘disassembly’. This ensures that when you travel between cities, shifting jobs, your entire lifestyle travels WITH you. Aalo 2.0 comes apart as conveniently as it’s put together.

7. staxxiom’s furniture

Although their motto is “No tools, no hassle”, the most defining characteristic of staxxiom’s furniture is that it’s so visually simple, you don’t even need a manual. With laser-cut pieces of wood that simply interlock to create your design, staxxiom is building on IKEA’s DIY culture by making their furniture more efficient, more eco-friendly, and as simplified as possible. That last part works in staxxiom’s favor too, because the simplified design gives their furniture a unified, wonderfully minimal aesthetic, along with the added benefit of being ridiculously easy to build too.

8. The Bloom Chair

Call it modular, call it DIY, call it I-have-control-over-my-interiors; the purpose of the Bloom Chair is to let you customize your chair, just the way you like it to be. It’s a collaborative effort between you and the manufacturer, where you get to download the modular design, cut it yourself and finally assemble it. While you make your piece, you have the liberty of modifying the pattern and making the end shape define your vision “This project is a heart-touching blending of sense and experience; It is not just about designing furniture and home décor, but a service process as well. Instead of making and distributing mass production, the process invites users to learn the manufacturing process of furniture and experience it with their own hands. Bloom Chair embodies such a full bloom concept and proposes a new kind of status for scrap leather,” Huang & Hsieh explained.

9. The Wool Lodge

Created using merino felt wool and birch wood,  the Wool Lodge is a safe haven of sorts for your pet. You can arrange and form the flat-packed structure by yourself easily. The lodge features merino felt roof, with the rest of the structure being made from wood. Defleur’s lodge basically has two functions. Spacious enough to fit your cat’s litter box, the lodge shelters the box within its structure. Your cat can sneak away, and pee or poop in privacy, away from any prying eyes. On the other hand, you can install a soft cushion or mattress instead of a litter box in the lodge. This creates a personal space for your pet, it could be a cat or a doggo on the smaller side!

10. The Atlas

The Atlas isn’t a conventional side-table. It comes almost with the proportions and shape of an easel, sporting an A-shaped frame. It comes with a slightly inclined design too, keeping the stand stable and preventing it from tipping over due to your bag’s weight. On top, two tiny hooks let you hang your backpack, bag, duffle, suitcase, purse, or tote, while a flat surface acts as a storage area for your phone, AirPods, sunglasses, etc. Its 6-part design is rather easy to set up and requires just two screws to hold in place. The entire stand ships flat-packed to you and can be assembled in well under 5 minutes.