Easy 30 Minute DIY Bathroom Towel Rack

This easy 30-minute DIY bathroom towel rack is simple and can be made from scrap wood.

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Our bathroom is tiny and doesn’t have much storage or wall space. So finding places for things that belong in the bathroom can be tricky.

We had been using plastic over the door hooks to hang our bath towels on. With 4 people in the house, the back of the door was very cramped, the towels couldn’t dry well, and the door wouldn’t close properly. So we needed to do something different for hanging towels.

One Saturday, I finally decided I was done messing with the towels and needed to build a towel rack. Now, I am not one to do wood projects on my own; I help my husband with projects, but I don’t typically take one on by myself without his guidance.

We have a lot of scrap wood around, free pallet wood we collect in the front yard, board scraps from other projects, and more down sticks than you know what to do with. So I had plenty of materials to choose from to make my towel rack. I decided to go simple and went outside and grabbed a pallet board that looked the right size and a stick.

Tools Needed To Make A DIY Bathroom Towel Rack

• Tape Measure
• Marker
• Some sort of saw – I used a circular saw, but any kind of saw, even a hand saw, will work
• Screw gun and screws (I used 2 1/2 inch screws)
• Glue (optional)
• Sandpaper (optional)
• Level (optional)

How To Make A DIY Bathroom Towel Rack

This towel rack can be made from whatever you have on hand. Or if you don’t have anything in a quick run to Home Depot, you should be able to find a board the right size.

1. Find a board (mine was 36 inches long and 8 inches wide) and a long, somewhat straight stick, whatever diameter you want your hooks to be. However, the bigger the stick is, the more spread out your towels will be when they are hanging, and they will dry better the more spread out they are.

2. Hold the board up to where you want it to go to ensure it will fit.

3. Trim anything off the board you need to make it fit, or find a different board. I just found one that fits the space.

4. Measure and mark your stick where you want to cut it to make your hooks. I made mine 3 inches long, and they are perfect for hanging bath towels. For my 36-inch rack, I made 5 hooks so they were 8 inches apart and 3 inches from each end.

5. Cut the stick on your marks; however it works best for the saw you are using. Using a circular saw, I hung one line over a concrete step while kneeling on the rest of the stick and cut it one at a time.

6. Once you get your hooks cut, mark your board with a pencil where you want your hooks to be. Find the center of your board and draw a pencil line down it. Then mark your hooks an equal distance apart. I placed them 8 inches apart, starting 3 inches from the edge of the board.

7. This next step, you can either use glue to hold the hooks on before you screw them, or, as I did, you can just line them up and hold them in place while you screw them. If you glue them on, set a brick on top of each hook to hold it in place while the glue dries. If you wish to skip that step, just line up the hook with your mark, turn the board over while holding the hook in place, and screw it in from the back. Repeat until all hooks are in place.

That’s all there is to making this DIY bathroom towel rack. Now you just have to mount it where you want it.

Mounting Your Towel Rack

Once you have completed your towel rack, you just have to mount it on your wall. Mounting this by yourself is doable, but tricky. I would recommend having someone hold the towel rack on the wall for you while you screw it in place.

Take the towel rack to wherever you want to hang it and grab 4 more screws; they don’t have to be as long as the ones we used on the rack.

Hold the towel rack on the wall and place a level on top of it. Adjust it as necessary until it is level on the wall.

Place a screw in each of the four corners about half an inch from each edge and screw it in.

Now, you are finished, and all you have to do is hang your towels on it. With the nice big hooks, the towels dry well, even though they aren’t all spread out.

This post took me so long to write that we have now been using ours for almost 2 years, and I still like it just as much as I did when I made it. It has held up nicely and was well worth the half hour of work I put into it.