Here’s How to Build a Boho Bathroom Ladder

A boho ladder will add style and storage to your bathroom. The tiered-dowel design is ideal for hanging towels, and it brings a touch of Bohemian charm to your décor. A boho ladder is also a super-easy DIY project you can complete in a couple of hours. Follow DIY Expert Chantelle Lourens’ easy steps to build your own boho bathroom ladder!

Here’s What You Need:  

• Tape measure

• Pencil

• Circular saw

• Drill

• Forstner bit

• 2 C-clamps

• 3 Bar clamps

• Two 6-foot dowels (1 3/8” diameter) for the legs

• One 6-foot dowel (7/8” diameter) for the rods

• Wood glue

• Minwax pickled oak alkyd wood stain

• Minwax alkyd wood conditioner pre-stain

Here’s How to Make It

Our bathroom has one unique storage requirement that sets it apart from any other room in our home. We need a place to hang towels! And like most bathrooms, ours only has one towel rack—not nearly enough space to provide towels for two or more people. Sure, we could drape them over the shower curtain rod but to me, that just looks messy. This boho ladder solved the problem and looks fantastic too.

Step 1: Cutting the Towel Rods

Because the dowels are round and roll around easily, we secured them to a flat surface with C-clamps before cutting them. To avoid damaging the dowels, we placed pieces of scrap wood between the clamps and the dowels. The ladder is wider at the bottom to fit around the toilet, and narrower at the top for a more refined look. That means the three towel rods need to be different lengths. Using a circular saw, we cut our 7/8” dowel to 15¼”, 17¼”, and 19¼” lengths.

Step 2: Shaving the Ladder Legs

The ladder is supposed to be about six feet high, so the leg dowels are already the right height. The only thing we needed to do is shave off the painted ends (and make sure we shaved off the same amount on each dowel!)

Step 3: Drilling the Towel Rod Sockets

Using the same clamping method, we drilled out the towel rod sockets with a 7/8” forstner bit. The sockets were drilled 5/8” deep to give the towel rods plenty of strength once in place. For the bottom towel rod, we measured and drilled 41” from the bottom to allow plenty of clearance over the toilet. The middle rod and top rod were each spaced 12” apart.

Step 4: Assembling the Ladder

Before breaking out the glue, we did a dry fit first to make sure all our rods and legs fit properly together. Then we glued the towel rods into the legs and laid the ladder flat on the floor. To help the glue set securely we used three bar clamps (one for each rod). Again, planks of scrap wood were used as buffers to prevent damage to the dowels.

Step 5: Staining the Ladder

We wanted to keep the wood looking as natural as possible. First, we applied a wood conditioner pre-stain to our ladder. Once dry we applied our wood stain (Minwax Pickled Oak) and allowed it to dry too.

That’s it! Five easy steps and we we’re done. I absolutely LOVE our new boho ladder and the minimalist look it brings to our bathroom. Be sure to visit your local Home Hardware store to get started on this project, or any other projects you may have in mind. We always find what we need there, and the staff are always extremely knowledgeable and helpful.