IKEA Floating Vanity

  • Posted on: June 28, 2015
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Service time: 3-4 hours.

If you’re considering an IKEA Floating Vanity, you’re in good company. I think there’s still a popular myth that IKEA furniture is only good for decorating your college room, or first apartment. That ‘press-board’ type construction that seemed to disintegrate upon repeated moving. For customers that have installed IKEA kitchens and bathroom vanity’s, that picture couldn’t be further from the truth.

Of the numerous vanities I’ve installed, one of the most interesting was an IKEA Floating Vanity. I was hesitant about installing this ‘floating’ vanity because even I was still guilty of holding on to old ideas about IKEA products.

The vanity top comes with the parts required for connection to the waste plumbing, but it is 100 percent likely that you will have to reconfigure the old plumbing because the vanity is built to allow full usage of the drawers that come with it. This means that the “P” trap is no longer under the drain; it is tucked into a 4 inch space between the back of the drawers and the wall. Depending on the way your supply and waste fittings are configured, it means you have to get very creative with your connections.

IKEA floating vanity IKEA sink under

Still holding on to my old prejudices, I made all the connections, turned on the water and waited for the leaks from the IKEA plumbing. There wasn’t any. Normally the tail pipe from the drain flows directly down into the p-trap under the sink which creates a decent drainage flow. The IKEA Floating Vanity tail pipe has to instantly take the water back towards the wall, so it turns instantly back to the wall. Despite there being no gravity assist, I didn’t see any appreciable difference in the time required to drain the sink.

Something to watch out for if you buy the IKEA brand faucet for this sink is the length of the supply risers. They are manufactured into the faucet, and were about 1 inch too short for connection to the hot and cold shut off valves. My customer quickly found a similar MOEN faucet at Home Depot, and I installed that instead with some braided risers I had with me. Of course, a plumber could open the wall and reconfigure the supply lines closer to the faucet, but consider how much extra this would cost.

The cabinet itself is anchored with 4 butterfly type bolts to the drywall, and two 3.5 inch screws through the back brace and into the wall studs. It replaced a standard pedestal sink, and offered new storage space not previously available. When compared to similar vanities from higher-end plumbing outlets costing two to three times more, the customer was very happy.