She Kept Her IKEA MALM and Added One Detail That Changed Every Drawer
Keeping a plain white dresser can feel like accepting its appearance along with its storage, especially when its flat fronts and recessed pulls make it easy to recognize. This IKEA MALM makeover shows how much those fronts can change without replacing the chest.
Creator @effies_home painted the five-drawer unit in Ol’ Blue Eyes by Frenchic, added wooden bead borders, and fitted yellow knobs. Its rectangular frame remains, while each drawer gains a raised outline around its flat center.
Photos taken between stages reveal the difference that trim makes, because the blue chest still carries the familiar MALM look before the beads appear. Their placement turns blank drawer faces into framed panels, giving the furniture a character that paint alone had not achieved.
White drawer fronts left room for an added border
Five broad drawers fill the original chest, with horizontal gaps providing almost all its detail. Recessed edges allow the drawers to open without handles, leaving the white fronts uninterrupted.
Those blank surfaces provide space for an inset design, while the chest’s tall proportions allow the same border to carry from the top drawer to the bottom.
Blue paint established the new color
Ol’ Blue Eyes covers the frame and drawer fronts in a muted blue shade. Drawers sit partway open in this process photo, where marks across the surfaces show the finish in progress.
At this point, the change is color: the slab fronts, recessed pulls, and straight sides still define the piece.
Wooden beads turned blank fronts into framed panels
Rows of small wooden beads form a rectangle on the top drawer, set back from all four edges. Some beads retain their natural wood color while a section has received blue paint, exposing the material behind the finished decoration.
Leaving space outside the border gives the drawer a frame within its own outline. Rounded beads introduce texture across a surface that had been flat, with small shadows separating each piece.
Painting the trim to match lets that relief carry the detail, rather than relying on a second color to outline the panel.
Yellow knobs added contrast within the blue borders
Pairs of round yellow knobs sit inside the beaded rectangles, bringing warm color to each drawer. Their spacing repeats down the chest, creating two vertical lines of hardware within the raised frames.
Close views show brush texture and variations in the beads, while the original recessed drawer edges remain visible underneath. These surviving details reveal the MALM base beneath the new finish.
Finished furniture picked up the room’s colors
Blue accents in the nearby play furniture and rug connect the chest to the room, where peach paint covers the lower wall beneath a striped upper section. A woven house-shaped basket and pale plush rabbit sit on top, with more toys held in a ribbed basket beside it.
Seen in this setting, the drawer borders give the blue surface detail at a smaller scale. Yellow knobs punctuate each panel, keeping the tall chest from reading as one uninterrupted block of paint.
Side by side, the same chest takes on a different character
Matching proportions in the before-and-after view make the changes easy to trace: the five drawers and outer frame remain, while color, raised borders, and visible pulls reshape their appearance.
The wooden beads do the most to change the flat-front design, introducing a paneled look without replacing the drawer faces. Keeping the existing chest becomes the starting point for a different piece of furniture.
Would you add the bead borders to your dresser, or choose blue paint and yellow knobs alone?
Image credits go to @effies_home.