Hide Your Cables: Creating A Minimalist Interior With Better Cable Management

*This is a collaborative post.

You’ve nailed your minimalist interior design, though there’s one glaring issue you didn’t think about. While your interiors contain very neat and clean design elements mixed with the right furniture, your cable management systems let everything down. There are clean lines and lots of minimalist colours everywhere, yet you constantly see cables or wires sticking out from behind TVs or other devices. 

It’s as off-putting as it gets - especially when the goal is to design a minimalist interior that’s all about crafting a neat and peaceful space. You can’t let cables get in the way of this, and yet there’s almost no way to avoid them in modern times. You rely on charging cables and connections to power outlets everywhere.

Therefore, you can’t entertain the idea of removing these cables or your home will lose functionality. The better approach is to work on cable management to help you develop a house that’s minimalistic and functional. You’ll still have the cables/wires; they’ll just be harder for people to see, and you’ll clean up some of the messier parts of your rooms. 

Tuck Power Strips Away In Cable Boxes

Wires and cables are annoying on their own, but most of your cables will run to big chunky power strips. They look terrible and can ruin the aesthetic of any room when noticeable. So, let’s think of some ways to hide these power strips and draw attention away from them. 

It turns out this is a very simple thing to do! Two main ideas spring to mind: 

• Hide your power strips in cable boxes

• Pick the right coloured power strips for your rooms

You’ll find cable boxes or cable organisers on loads of websites in a wide wealth of styles/designs. Pick one that’s simple and matches the colour scheme of your room so it blends in. From here, you place your power strips inside the boxes and feed the cable through a gap on the side/top. It hides the garish strip with lots of plugs attached and keeps everything neatly compact and tucked away. 

Picking the right coloured power strips helps to make everything blend in. For instance, if your minimalist interior design uses lots of neutral colours and whites, then a big black power strip and cable will stick out like the sorest of thumbs. You’d want a white or neutral one - which you then match with the same coloured cable box. Instead of having an ugly power strip drawing everyone’s attention, you’ve got a neat box that blends into the background and maintains the minimalist aesthetic. 

Run Wires/Cables Along Walls Using Trunking

Some wires or cables are completely unavoidable in certain rooms. The biggest example is your living room, which may need cables connecting the TV to an aerial or fibre optic cable system. You may also have a study with a computer that needs to be wired to the broadband router, and so on. 

Whatever the reasoning, you’re stuck with extremely long cables or wires running around a room or crossing into different rooms. Again, trying to find cables that match the colour of your walls or skirting boards will help them blend in. Unfortunately, that’s not always possible as companies sometimes give you cables to connect their devices, and you’re stuck using a black or white one. 

This is where cable trunking comes in extremely handy! Trunking is like a sleeve or cover that conceals cables. You clip it to your skirting boards and feed wires wherever they need to go. Meteor Electrical is a great place to buy trunking and cable clips from as it sells wholesale products that are good enough for qualified electricians, so you know they’ll stand the test of time. With your cables now concealed and running along the bottom of your walls, you’ve got a way cleaner and more slicked-back interior to work with. 

Instead of seeing large cables everywhere, you barely even notice they’re there. They’re hiding in plain sight, so no eyes are drawn to them, and the focus can be firmly set on your stunning minimalistic interiors. 

Install New Plug Sockets

Everything discussed so far has been something you can do yourself without additional help. However, to be safe and avoid causing serious problems, this specific tip requires the assistance of a proper electrician. 

Unless you designed and built your home from scratch, you have no saying on where all the electrical outlets and plug sockets are. Strangely, that’s a bigger problem than you think - especially when you start designing your rooms and placing things in the ideal areas. You may notice that the plug sockets are not in optimal positions related to specific devices or pieces of furniture. 

Here are a few examples most homeowners have to deal with: 

• Your living room power outlets are on a side wall away from where your TV is placed, forcing you to run big power cables to them. 

• There are no plug sockets near your bed, meaning you need to run extension leads towards them. 

• The plug sockets are installed halfway up the wall, making it difficult to conceal or blend in thick power cables. 

As a result, you should consider installing new plug sockets and removing old ones. A qualified electrician shouldn’t have trouble doing this, and you can install the new sockets in the most optimal positions. 

For instance, remove the sockets from the side wall and install them on the back wall where your TV is positioned. The power cables will now remain hidden behind the television, which means you can use shorter cables instead of long ones to reach the previous socket. Making a few subtle changes to your electrical infrastructure will massively improve your interior design. 

Switch To Wireless Devices Whenever Possible

What’s the best way to hide your cables? Not having any in the first place! In an ideal world, everything would work wirelessly. You wouldn’t need any wires to connect one thing to another, allowing for total minimalism and optimal neatness. 

Can you realistically do this? No. Some things have to be wired, but you can find a selection of wireless devices that reduce the need for cables in some parts of your home. A WiFi router is an immediate example. Rather than plugging ethernet cables into all of your internet devices, you can use a WiFi connection to get them online. Just make sure you have a good router and internet plan to avoid slow connections. 

Another example is a wireless mouse and keyboard for a computer. Maybe this is in your bedroom or a study area; regardless, swapping wired for wireless versions will reduce the number of cables in that particular area. It will also be easier to clean up the place, and things won’t look anywhere near as messy as they would with wires everywhere. 

Assess your devices and consider switching to wireless versions. To reiterate, some things can only be connected via wires and cables. This idea will not 100% replace everything in your home, but when it is possible, it makes a lot of sense. 

Conceal Cables With Your Furniture

The final tip is probably the easiest - and it’s more of a cheat than anything else! You want to conceal your cables and power strips as best you can. Many of the tips help with this, but a simpler idea is to move your furniture so it blocks wires from view. 

Pair this with cable ties and boxes to neaten up the wires behind your TV or under your desk. For example, get a nice TV unit that feeds cables through the back and blocks them from view. It maintains the nice compact image of a minimalist entertainment area in your living room.

Think about larger furniture items as well, like your sofa and armchairs. There could be space underneath for some slim cable trays that hide all of your charging cables and wires. It’s a bit harder with a desk - they usually have openbacks, so you see all the wires hanging down below. As such, try to find one with a concealed back to hide your cables behind and make the underside of your desk look far neater and more minimalist. 

Although it’s not technically “furniture,” you may also consider hiding wires or cables under rugs in some areas of your home. Running them under rugs prevents trip hazards while tidying up the cable management system. 

Achieve Minimalism With Better Cable Management

Don’t fall into the trap of getting carried away with minimalist interior design yet forgetting about things like cables and wires. The wrong cable management approach will ruin your interior design and make things stand out for negative reasons. Minimalism is all about decluttering your spaces and creating a tidy home. You can’t achieve this aesthetic with black wires running everywhere, multiple cables hanging from devices and chunky power strips sticking out. Use the tips and tricks in this guide to hide your cables and neaten up every room in your home. Now, you will truly achieve the minimalist interiors you’ve been dreaming of!