Ikea Milsbo Hole Hack to Add Lights and Wires
The Ikea Milsbo Hack to add holes and grommets gives flexibility for modifications now or elements you may want to add in the future.
The Milsbo comes with two very small pre-drilled holes in the metal top piece, so Ikea lighting wires can be threaded through. But this can be very limiting to potential elements you may want to add, like more lighting or grow lights, a fogger or water feature needing a pump or filter.
We chose to drill two 2″ holes, then added grommets to cover the holes.
Ikea Milsbo comes with two small holes to thread Ikea lighting wires through
The Ikea Milsbo can be lighted with Ikea light sets by threading the wires through these two pre-drilled holes in the top, located at the back.
If these holes aren’t big enough, or you plan to add more elements that have electrical wiring, consider drilling holes and adding grommets. This will give you some flexibility to add more elements in the future, even if you don’t have a need right now.
With holes, you could add more things with cords & plugs!
- Lights on top
- Backlighting
- Grow lights for live plants
- Fogger
- Water fountain
- Heat lamp
We added two 2" holes: bottom left and top center
Ikea Milsbo metal is fairly thin, took 4-5 minutes with steady pressure
Ikea Milsbo metal is powder-coated (to prevent rust) BUT...
drilling holes exposes metal, so we painted with Rustoleum
We added 2" grommets to cover each hole
Electric cords go thru grommets easily, hermit crabs can't crawl out!
We used a flexible pipe to raise cord/opening in the bottom hole. Why? This cord is for the water pool water filter on the bottom level where substrate (sand/coco-fiber) is 8" high.
