How To Install IKEA Suspension Rails

The Swedish home furnishing retailer Ikea has built a worldwide reputation for user-assembled modular furniture and fixtures. Most furnishings from Ikea's warehouse shelves are packed pancake-flat for rooftop car transport. At home, the components assemble into items like a dresser, entertainment center or dining room table. Ikea cabinet units for kitchens, bathrooms and garages are constructed from six-piece component kits and quick-mount on a suspension rail screwed into wall studs. A track in the suspension rail accepts sliding metal mounting squares. Bolts on each square insert into mounting holes in the upper corners of the cabinets. This method ensures level alignment of a row of adjacent, wall-mounted cabinets and allows flexibility in positioning.

Step 1

Locate and mark the studs in the wall where you plan to mount the cabinets. Use a commercially available stud finder or tap the wall with a hammer and listen for the point where the hollow sound turns deeper and solid, indicating the location of a stud. Studs in residential construction are usually 16 inches apart from center to center so you may measure the location of additional studs after locating the first one.

Step 2

Cut the suspension rail with a hacksaw to the cumulative length of all cabinet units to be hung on the wall. Suspension rails for Ikea cabinets such as the Akurum model are supplied in 80-inch lengths. Additional suspension rails may be cut and mounted end to end on the wall if extra length is required.

Step 3

Measure and mark the height of the suspension rail. The rail runs along the cabinet's top edge so the marks should correspond to the desired height of the top of the cabinets.

Step 4

Have an assistant hold the rail in place at the marks. Use a level to adjust and verify the level of the suspension rail. Mark the rail mounting holes at the studs.

Step 5

Mount the suspension rail to the wall studs using 2-inch #10 wood screws.

Step 6

Insert a mounting bolt through a metal mounting square and slide it into the suspension rail track. Add the required number of additional bolts/mounting squares to the rail track to accommodate two bolts per cabinet unit.

Step 7

Have an assistant lift the first cabinet unit up to the rail. Slide the first two mounting squares so the bolts align with the holes in the reinforced mounting plates at the upper corners of the cabinet.

Step 8

Hang the cabinet on the mounting bolts. Install the metal washer plates and nuts on the end of the mounting bolts inside the cabinet and tighten to secure the cabinet to the mounting bolts.

Step 9

Draw the individual cabinets together after all have been mounted and hold them in place with C-clamps. Join each cabinet to the adjacent cabinet by drilling out the fourth pre-drilled hole from the top and bottom of the side of each cabinet. Secure the cabinets together with the supplied connection screws.