How to Make a French Cleat

French cleats are versatile and robust hanging systems that transform any wall into a customizable storage solution. Whether you’re organizing your entire garage or workshop, pantry, or office, mastering the art of French cleats opens up a world of possibilities for efficient storage and display. This comprehensive guide will explore everything you need to know about building and installing a French cleat system.

Understanding the Basics of French Cleats

A French cleat consists of two interlocking pieces of wood, each cut at a 45-degree angle. One piece is attached to the wall, while the other is secured to the cabinet or item you want to hang. This design distributes weight evenly and provides excellent stability, making it ideal for hanging heavy objects such as cabinets, shelves, and artwork.

It’s not easy to hang things securely and securely on a wall. The typical methods of using angle brackets or picture frame hangers are only acceptable for lightweight objects.

Even screwing through part of the casing, as is usually done for hanging kitchen cabinets, isn’t all that secure, considering that it depends on the strength of two screws to support a whole cabinet. If you’ve got something with heavy items to hang, you need a heavy-duty hanger.

This is where the French cleat storage system comes in. Although simple in design, the French Cleat or French cleat storage system provides a safe and secure method of attaching anything to a wall. The interlocking cleat system is robust, allowing you to hang much more weight than otherwise, with little to no risk of falling off.

In the case of kitchen cabinets, the bottom of the cabinet is more likely to fall out than the French cleat system or storage system itself. The French cleat storage system, screws, or the French cleat system or storage system itself is to fail.

French cleats are especially useful for hanging fireplace mantles, wall-mounted cabinets, headboards, and other heavy items to secure walls.

They can easily support 75 pounds or more of weight, depending on how many screws are used to attach them to the wall and what is being hung on wall cleats, as well as how securely those screws are run into the wall studs. Their simple design makes using them quick and easy while providing superior strength.

What is a French Cleat?

So, what exactly is a French cleat tool or a hang French cleat tool? It is a two-piece interlocking method of hanging, where gravity pushes the Cleat harder together, ensuring that it can’t come loose.

The more weight you put on one side of the French cleat part of a French cleat tool or hang a French Cleat tool, the stronger the grip becomes, pulling the item hung into the wall and ensuring that it can’t come loose. The only thing that could cause it to rip or break loose, other than taking it apart intentionally, is an earthquake.

You can buy commercially made plywood metal French cleats at any hardware store, shop, garage, shop, or other shop, garage, shop or home improvement center. These are sometimes called Clips and are made of plywood scrap wood, extruded aluminum, or bent steel (usually stainless steel).

However, there’s no reason to pay $10 to $30 for a commercially made plywood French cleat, for example, when you can create one yourself in minutes, often out of various materials or scrap plywood or wood.

Gathering Materials and Tools

Before you begin, gather the following materials and a set of tools:

• Plywood or solid wood boards (preferably hardwood)
• Screws (appropriate length for your project)
• Saw (circular saw or table saw)
• Drill and drill bits
• Level
• Tape measure
• Pencil
• Paint or finish (optional)

Step 1: Cutting the Cleats

Start by cutting your wood into strips for the cleats. The width and thickness of the cleats depend on your preference and the weight of the items and pictures you plan to hang. A common size for French cleats is 2 inches wide and 3/4 inch thick.

Use a saw to cut the sheet of wood at a 45-degree angle along its length, creating two matching pieces for each cleat. Make sure the angles are precise to ensure a snug fit when the cleats are attached.

Step 2: Determining Placement

Decide where you want to install the French cleats on your wall. Consider the weight of the French cleat wall, the items you’ll hang, and the spacing between them. Locate the wall studs using a stud finder and mark their positions.

Step 3: Attaching the Wall Cleats

Position one-half panel of each cleat directly on the wall studs, ensuring they are level and aligned with your markings. Use a drill to screw the cleats securely to the wall, making sure to drive the screws into the studs for maximum support.

If you attach the cleats directly to a drywall or plywood surface without studs, use appropriate anchors or fasteners to ensure a firm hold.

Step 4: Hanging the Cabinets or Shelves

With the wall cleats securely attached, it’s time to hang the cabinets or shelves. Place the matching halves of the bracket and the cleats on the back of the item you want to hang, ensuring they align with the ones on the wall.

Carefully lift the item and hook it onto the wall cleats. The mounted item’s weight should rest evenly on the cleats, providing stable support.

Step 5: Finishing Touches

Once the cabinets or shelves are hung, double-check their alignment and adjust if necessary. Use a level to ensure they are straight.

If desired, paint or finish the cleats to match the surrounding decor. This step is optional but can enhance the overall appearance of your French cleat system.

Step 6: Adding Accessories

To maximize the versatility of your French cleat system, consider adding accessories such as hooks, brackets, or storage boxes and bins. These accessories can be attached directly to the cleats, allowing you to customize your storage solution to suit your needs.

Troubleshooting and Tips

• If you make a mistake or need to reposition a cleat, unscrew it from the wall and adjust as needed.
• When hanging heavy items, use screws of appropriate length and thickness to ensure a secure hold.
• For added stability, install multiple cleats along the length of large cabinets or shelves.
• Don’t worry if your cleats are visible behind the items you hang. They’re meant to be functional rather than decorative, and their strength and stability matter most.

Commercially Manufactured French Cleat

Any other French cleat system depends on the interlock of the two pieces to work. This simple interlock, created by two opposing angles, allows gravity to push the pieces together, ensuring they won’t fall apart. The commercial French cleat system, shown below, works like this.

Commercial French Cleat

A variation on the French Cleat is also made, where the two pieces interlock more positively. The overall thickness of the Cleat is lessened, making it possible to use in cases where there isn’t enough of an indent in the back of the piece to be hung to allow for a ½” or ¾” thick Cleat. 

Modified French Cleat

Cutting and Installing French Cleats

You can make your French cleats from any long, narrow piece of wood. I’ve used 1”x 3”s, 1”x 4”x and strips of ½” or ¾” plywood. But you could also use thicker pieces of material, especially if what you’re hanging has a deep recess.

It all depends on what I have and what you’re trying to hang. The actual material doesn’t matter as much as what you do with it. You’ll want to cut your French Cleat just a bit shorter than the object to be hung so that it can remain hidden. The object’s position can be adjusted slightly while providing the most support to whatever you are hanging on the wall.

I mentioned that the thickness of the material you use for your French Cleat is unimportant. Even so, you’ll probably find that a certain plywood thickness will work best for each item you try to hang. Ideally, the entire length of the item should sit flush up against the wall without a gap.

So you’ll want to select a piece of wood that is as deep as the recess in the back of the work you are hanging and no deeper. You’re better off with it being not quite as deep rather than too profound.

To turn any of these scrap wood pieces back into a complete French cleat tool, rip it through the center at a 45-degree angle. I recommend doing this on a table saw unless you are good with a handheld circular saw. If nothing else is available, a band saw will work as well, especially if you have a fence for your band saw. You can even use a scroll saw to cut short ones.

While the French cleat tool will still work if the cut line is shaky, you won’t have contact throughout the entire length so that the hanger won’t be as strong. There’s also a chance that whatever you are hanging will become crooked.

This problem can be solved by planning the angled edge of the Cleat once it is cut. Planning allows you to straighten the cut line, eliminate saw marks, and clean up the edge. A sharp plane often gives you a finish that’s as good as sanding. 

Ripped 1”x 3” to make a French Cleat

One of the two pieces of your French Cleat has to be mounted to the French cleat wall, and the other to whatever you are hanging on the French cleat wall. It doesn’t matter which is used for which part, as they are essentially the same, even if your cut was off-center.

Use flathead screws, such as drywall screws, to sink the screw heads below the surface of the French cleat wall. If necessary, make countersink holes into the holes before installing the screws (this may not be necessary with drywall screws, as they will make countersink holes into softer woods without drilling a few countersink holes).

You want to make sure that both pieces are mounted so that the shorter side is against the wall’s surface or whatever you are hanging, and the longer side is away from the surface.

The piece mounted on one side of the wall must be mounted so that the angled edge of one mount is pointed up, and the other side of the work mounted on whatever you are hanging needs to be mounted so that the angled edge is pointed down. Otherwise, it will fall off and hang down.

French Cleat

Always make sure that you are mounting the French cleat wall studs down into something solid, as it has to support the weight of the stud and the screw and other studs and the other studs or whatever you are hanging or mounting the studs on or mounting the studs on.

In the case of the wall, always find the studs within the wall and anchor and mount, and install the French cleat wall studs down to the wall studs with 2” or longer drywall screws; for heavy items, use 2 ½” or longer drywall screws.

Remember the thickness of the wall cleat when positioning it on the back of whatever you are hanging. This point is critical with large, heavy items like fireplace mantles.

Since the wall cleat is usually ¾” of half an inch thick, it needs to be inset into the wood of the object by half that amount, leaving the surface of the wall cleat flush with the back of the wood of the mantle. Otherwise, the cover will sit ¾” away from the wall cleat or fireplace brick, looking ready to fall off.

When hanging something that needs to be positioned precisely, such as a fireplace mantle, for example, it is easier to measure the exact position for one piece of wood to hang on the Cleat if you attach how much weight to secure the piece of wood that goes on the back edge of the Cleat to the mantle first.

Then, you can measure how far this is to hang above the floor, where you should mount the second Cleat, and how much weight it takes to attach part of the wood to the second Cleat that attaches to the wall.

It is unnecessary to nail or screw to attach the item to the table or wall, for example, if you use French Cleats screws. Gravity alone should bevel to hold it in place. The only thing that nailing or screwing to attach it would bevel do is make it harder to remove the item later, should you need to bevel to.

If You Don’t Have a Table Saw

I mentioned earlier that you could use a band saw, circular saw, or scroll saw for how to make a French cleat to cut how to make a French cleat if you don’t have a table saw (the table saw is of choice for this). But what about making a French cleat if you don’t have any available options?

Or what, how do you make a French cleat if you do, but you’re not confident in freehanding that cut with your circular saw or table saw?? Is there a way to make French cleats using only hand tools?

Of course, there is. I don’t know how long French cleats have existed, but they’ve been around longer than most power tools. I doubt that carpenters in the 1800s went to their local sawmill to get the angle cut for their French cleats; they cut it themselves.

This means cutting how to make a second French cleat with a hand and circular saw again, a task not for the faint of heart.

I switched to using Japanese-style “pull” saws several years ago rather than continuing to use what we would consider the more traditional “push” saw.

My reason for this was that it is much easier to control the blade angle of the circular blade with a pull saw, keeping it on the mark the entire length of the line. I never got quite good enough at doing that with a push saw and blade angle.

The trick to making the angled cut is to support the board you are ripping at an angle that allows you to keep the saw vertical, just as if you were pulling it square, rather than maintaining the board at an angle for your cuts. Your eye can easily see if your saw is not vertical, but it is hard to tell if you are holding it at 25 or 30 degrees. 

Jig for hand-ripping French cleats

So, to rip holes in the boards, it is helpful to make a couple of blocks of wood that will hold them at the point and at the same width and angle you wish to rip holes in them. Even though cutting wood with French cleats at a point of 45 degrees is normal, I’d recommend going with something like 30 degrees.

For example, if you are hand-cutting wood with screws in them. At the same time, a French cleat at 45 degrees is convenient. Any point, width, and angle will work, for example, just as long as both pieces of wood are cut at the exact moment, width, and angle.

These blocks can be placed or clamped on whatever support you typically use for ripping a board with a hand saw. Ideally, that would be a ripping bench or circular saw, table saw, or sanding block, which puts the board at a good height for cutting, allows you to kneel on it with one knee to clamp it in place, and has a slot for your circular saw blade or table saw blade or table saw, too, so that you don’t cut into the bench or circular saw or table saw blade or table saw or sanding block itself.

Hanging Cabinets with French Cleats

Kitchen and bathroom cabinets can be hung with stud cleats or French stud cleats, each stud cleat providing a robust, semisolid version of cabinet hanging and mounting. One advantage to this cabinet top system is that even if the drywall suffers water damage, the attached stud cleat or French stud cleat will remain strong, holding the cabinet in place.

On the downside, French wall cleats cannot be used with a soffit over the cabinets, as some kitchens are built. For example, it is impossible to use a wall cleat system cabinet with the two together because the attached soffit makes it impossible to slide the cabinet down onto the other side of the attached wall cleat system cabinet. This also makes it impossible to use French wall cleats when the wall cleat system cabinet goes up to the ceiling.

Fortunately, today’s styling allows for mounting wall cabinets with space above them, often used as a display space. French cleats are especially lovely in such a situation, making it easy to install and hang the cabinets evenly and appropriately, especially when using French cleats with multiple cabinets.

It helps to use a template for the part of the French cleat system that attaches to the cabinet to ensure that all French cleats are mounted at the same thickness and level.

Depending on personal preference, a template of the same thickness or level can be used to mount the cleat or the top cleat part that attaches the cabinet to the cleats on the wall. In either case, the idea is to have the French cleats all attached at the same height to ensure that the cabinets and cleats are mounted evenly.

Using French Cleats in the Workshop

In contrast, a full-making French cleats system or cleat wall system allows you to build and install various tool holders, each customized for the category of tools or components you will be hanging on. Typically, the French cleats and system will be made the entire width of the available space and hung every four to eight inches apart.

Individual tool holders or tool holder “centers” for a specific category of tools or components can be hung anywhere on board the entirely made cleat system, French cleat wall cleat top, top wall cleat system, tool top wall cleat top system, tool total wall cleats complete system or Cleat wall cleat top design, and moved around to make room for new tools.

The only precaution in making a French cleat shop wall is to make the materials and wooden cleats consistent so that everything you install is interchangeable.

Otherwise, you’ll find yourself boxed into a corner, shop, or garage where you can only mount tool holders and wooden cleats in specific places, which may not be convenient.

French Cleat Workbench

The same idea of using French cleats to make a tool storage wall can be used on a workbench. Mounting French cleats to the sides of your workbench allows you to use the same sort of tool storage holders mentioned for hanging tools on the how-to-make French cleat tool, tool, or tool storage wall.

Those tool storage holders could be moved back and forth between the tool storage wall and the edge of the bench, as needed for working on specific wood projects.

Conclusion

Building and installing a French cleat system is straightforward and can significantly enhance the organization and functionality of any space. Whether setting up shop in a woodshop, organizing your garage, or displaying artwork in your home office, French cleats provide a versatile and reliable solution for easily hanging cabinets, shelves, and other items.

Following the steps outlined in this guide and experimenting with different configurations, you can create a custom storage system that meets your specific needs and preferences. With creativity and attention to detail, you’ll have a French wall cleat system that keeps your space organized and your belongings easily accessible for years.