The UK’s Best Wheelie Bin Storage Ideas
Want to conceal your unsightly wheelie bins but aren’t sure how? I hear you. Wheelie bin storage offers a range of benefits, keeping our wheelie bins out of view, ensuring they’re secure, and protecting them from wind damage and pests.
Yet, it can be challenging to know what options are out there and what style of wheelie bin storage you should choose to suit your garden.
Don’t fret. This article contains 25 wheelie bin storage ideas for various styles – some weird and wacky, others contemporary and cool.
1. Go Modern With a Stylish Red Cedar Bin Store
If a contemporary design is your kind of style, a red cedar bin store may be just the thing for you. Red cedar is an excellent choice for a bin store, as it’s durable in damp climates. You can trust that your cedar bin store won’t decay, shrink, warp, or swell, even in the most severe weather conditions.
2. Wheelie Bin Storage Ideas DIY
Wheelie bin storage is easy-peasy to make yourself. If you’re handy with a power tool, you can craft a bin store similar to this design. However, if you want the perks of a low-cost bin store without having to get your hands dirty, purchase ready-made privacy screens at your local garden centre.
3. Incorporate Fence Gates in Your Outside Bin Storage Ideas
Gates are an unusual yet convenient way to store your wheelie bins. Rather than moving screens every week, you can simply unlatch your gate, and away you go! You can incorporate this design into your existing exterior fence or add it onto the side of your home, like below.
4. Outdoor Recycling Bin Storage Ideas – Get Inventive With Screens
If you strive for originality in all that you do, a typical slatted panel or willow screen may not be your cup of tea. Instead, why not try this sun design screen? Decorative black metal screens offer versatility and durability, making them another great choice. Other inventive options include rusty or corrugated metal.
5. Wheelie Bin Storage Plans – Create a Willow Screen
Willow screens have a number of advantages over your typical wooden bin store – they shield your bins from view while allowing wind to pass through, increasing their resistance to wind damage. They also add a more natural look, making them the ideal choice for a wildlife-friendly garden.
6. Hide Your Wheelie Bins Behind a Hedge
It’s easy to hide your bins behind a neat, well-manicured hedge. Laurel, privet, and yew hedging are the best choices for bin stores because they’re low maintenance, so they won’t take up much of your time throughout the year. Top tip: ensure you choose an evergreen hedge; otherwise, you’ll be able to see your bins for half the year!
7. Disguise a Bin Storage Space In Your Front Wall
What better way to use a front wall than to hide your bins? This clever design has gone a step further and disguised the bins within the hedging, keeping them neatly out of the way of people walking by and out of sight from the house. You could also make the most of your front steps by incorporating a bin store if there’s space.
8. Have Two-in-One Seating and Wheelie Bin Storage
Bin storage privacy screens don’t have to go to waste – simply place seating in front or even integrate it into your wheelie bin storage to utilise every inch of space. In this design, they have put several gabion baskets in front of their bin store, then added some sleek wooden slats to make a comfortable bench.
9. Designate a Wheelie Bin Zone
If hiding your bins doesn’t concern you, why not create a wheelie bin zone instead? Cordon off an area using wooden panels but leave it open for easy access when you need to wheel your bins out each week. This bin storage idea offers flexibility, as you can choose a colour as subtle or outlandish as you wish.
10. Hide Your Wheelie Bins Behind Beautiful Climbing Plants
If you’re concerned with keeping your garden as natural-looking as possible, consider using climbing plants to hide your wheelie bins. Just box in your wheelie bins with trellis panels, and add clematis, honeysuckle, jasmine, roses, or ivy. If you want the natural look without the maintenance needs, why not try faux wisteria?
11. Use Pallet Wood for a Bespoke Wheelie Bin Storage Solution
Pallet wood is an excellent material to use if you choose to create wheelie bin storage yourself, as it’s cheap, environmentally friendly, and waterproof – it won’t warp and bend so long as it’s been treated! You could fix pallet wood planks to a metal frame, like below, or secure pallets together as they are to create a rustic-looking bin storage solution.
12. Make a Miniature Green Roof to Obscure Your Wheelie Bin Storage
What better way to obscure your wheelie bin storage than with a beautiful green roof? You have numerous options for this – you could try xeriscaping, as shown below, with various succulents and gravel, a wildflower roof that will attract bees, butterflies, and insects in droves, or even a lawn alternative like clover.
13. Use a Slatted Panel Screen to Fence Off Your Wheelie Bins
Slatted panels work wonders when attempting to hide your wheelie bins, as they conceal your unsightly bins without closing off the space, retaining your garden’s size. If you’re making a slatted panel screen yourself, keep the gaps uniform and around 18-20 mm. You can choose different woods to suit your space – ipe and teak are darker woods that work well outside, especially in more contemporary homes.
14. Buy Simple Rattan Wheelie Bin Storage
Rattan is another material that stands the test of time outdoors due to its ability to resist extreme weather – looking natural in the process – and its strength and flexibility. You can create simple wheelie bin storage using fence panels, timber frames, hinges, and rope handles for an ultra-natural effect. What’s more, you can add wheels on the base for portability!
15. Prioritise Durability With a Plastic Wheelie Bin Storage Unit
Plastic wheelie bins are typically the go-to if you want an easy-care option. They tend to be weatherproof (especially if they are entirely closed on all sides, like the design below) but are still easy to open, making wheeling your bins out each week a doddle. You can also usually padlock plastic wheelie bin storage units, avoiding unwanted tampering.
16. Opt for a Heavy Duty Metal Wheelie Bin Store
If heavy duty is your style, metal is a clear winner. It is the pinnacle of weather-resistant, durability, and strength – it beats all other materials in this area. So, if these are your priority, metal is a clear choice. However, some downsides of metal wheelie bin stores are they’re typically expensive, very weighty, and will only suit some garden designs. They may also rust if a rustproof coating hasn’t been applied, so look out for this when buying!
17. Make Your Wheelie Bin Storage a Haven for Wildlife
Every element of garden design is an opportunity to create a haven for wildlife. For wheelie bin storage, you could add wildlife-friendly plants like geraniums, oregano, sedums, Russian sage, and borage. Installing bug houses by creating little pockets of organic materials like dead wood, dry leaves, loose bark, straw, dry sticks, and so on is another excellent option.
18. Use Gabion Baskets to Shield Your Wheelie Bins from Sight
Gabion baskets are becoming increasingly popular in the UK because of their durability and flexibility. They can make up walls, planters, pond surrounds, and more. They’re easy enough for anyone to install, as they only require metal wire casing and rocks of your choice – angular rock is the prime choice for gabion fill because they lock together, preventing any movement.
19. Include Your Recycle Box Store in Your Wheelie Bin Storage
While concocting your wheelie bin storage ideas, consider your recycle boxes (if you have any!). These aren’t exciting to look at, either, so you may choose to incorporate recycling bin shelving in your bin storage design. If you decide to build your bin storage yourself, ensure you use treated timber – most bin stores are made from FSC timber because it’s responsibly sourced.
20. Add a Log Store to Your Wheelie Bin Storage
Need a place to keep your logs dry this winter? While making (or buying!) a bin store, keep your logs in mind. This combination wheelie bin, recycling box and log storage unit will take up considerable space, so I don’t recommend this option for small gardens. However, it’s the go-to storage solution if you have space to spare!
21. Make Your Wheelie Bin Storage Into a Raised Bed
You could add a green roof to your wheelie bin storage or take it to the next level, making it a part of the landscape by incorporating a raised bed. Add some hardy perennial plants like lavender, ornamental grasses, and hostas to keep it exciting yet low maintenance.
22. Add Modern Modular Bin Storage for a Contemporary Home
A contemporary home could benefit from modular bin storage like the one below. This simple, sleek wooden design with contrasting dark colours does the opposite of keeping your bin storage out of sight – it actually draws attention to it! But if you like a little bit of contemporary drama, this may be the choice for you.
23. Fence Panel Bin Storage Ideas
You could create a killer wheelie bin storage unit with fence panels you have lying around. If you don’t have any to hand, you can pick them up cheap from car boot sales and places like Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace. Even if you buy new fence panels, this is still a cost-effective way of creating wheelie bin storage.
24. Bamboo Bin Screen Enclosure
If your garden sports an oriental style, this bamboo bin screen enclosure may be right up your alley. Bamboo adds a natural edge to your garden and is extremely easy to install, even if you’re a DIY novice. What’s more, bamboo can last for 20 – 3o years outdoors, with next to no maintenance requirements, so long as the canes have been treated with insect and rot repellant.
25. Create a Planter Bin Screen on Wheels
Stationary wheelie bin stores are great, but what if you want to move them? Adding wheels to your bin storage is the ideal solution for those tight on space or who like to change their mind often. This portable bin screen is just like any other, with the added benefit of flexibility.
Final Note on Wheelie Bin Storage
Who would have thought there would be so many options when it came to wheelie bin storage ideas? No matter your garden’s size, style, or layout, there are wheelie bin storage solutions for you. Whether you do it yourself or buy a unit already made up, you can hide those unsightly bins in style. So, what will it be?
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