DIY Indoor Climbing Wall: ORC Week 8

It’s Week 8 of the One Room Challenge, which means this DIY indoor climbing wall is the final component of this room makeover. This room has seen such a transformation over 8 weeks, to see how the room turned out and tutorials for each component, check out the Game Room Makeover here.

This DIY indoor climbing wall is such a fun addition to a game room for kids. Plus, it's a very easy beginnier build with only a few tools needed.

Build a DIY Indoor Climbing Wall

Building a climbing wall is easy! This is a great beginner project and only requires a few tools. Plus, it’s one that kids *and adults* will love. I’ll admit that I’ve climbed to the ceiling a few times, to test it of course.

I wanted a climbing wall as the final touch to this room to give it that extra touch of fun. I had an empty piece of wall next to the DIY built in shelving that I made was tucked away from the rest of the room. It just begged for a fun feature like this!

What you need to build an indoor rock wall

2×3 boards (cut to length of your rock wall)
3/4″ plywood (cut to the size of your wall)
3″ construction screws
drill
stud finder
level
climbing holds
miter saw/circular saw

How to make the rock wall

Determine the size of your rock wall. Mine was 2′ wide by 8′ tall, so I was able to buy two 2’x4′ plywood sheets to stack for this project.

Cut the 2″x3″ studs so that they can run across the width of the rock wall, and enough to space them 16″ apart for the entire height of the rock wall.

For this wall, I did six 2″x3″s spaced 16″ apart for the height of the rock wall.

Once cut to size, use 3″ construction screws to attach the 2″x3″s horizontally into the studs. This will look like a ladder when complete.

Assemble the rock wall by drilling holes where the climbing holds will be, and using the mounting hardware to attach the holds to the wall.

When determining the spacing of the climbing holds, do not place any holds where the plywood will meet the 2″x3″ brackets behind the wall.

Once the plywood wall is complete with the climbing holds, attach the rock wall to the 2″x 3″s on the wall with the construction screws.

The rock wall is complete!

I chose to spray paint the climbing holds with white spray paint and textured stone spray because I didn’t want the colorful climbing holds. I also painted the plywood, but you can choose to leave it natural or paint it whatever theme you like!