We all have them somewhere in our home…shelves. They can either look messy, filled with loads of clutter that sits collecting dust, or they can be artfully styled to showcase beautiful items in your home. It’s not rocket science to style shelves beautifully. You don’t need a degree in interior decorating either to learn how to do it successfully. All it takes is a willingness to learn a few simple rules, a little patience and have some fun with the process. Anyone can have beautifully styled shelves just like the ones you see on Pinterest and in designer homes.
Let’s be honest. It can be very intimidating to style shelves. Where do you start? What items should you display? How do you best display your items so they look nice and not just a jumble of disjointed tchotchkes? What goes together and what doesn’t? Maybe you’re thinking you need to go out and purchase a bunch of new things.
Take a deep breath! I’m going to break it down into an easy to follow formula. Once you master this formula, you will easily be able to create artfully styled shelves using items you already have in your home. No trip to Homegoods required!
Today I am using my dining room shelves as an example for this tutorial. We recently moved and I hastily unpacked and filled the shelves with my barware. It was a practical solution. After all the built in hutch functions as our wine bar so it made sense for all our barware to go on the shelves. The shelves weren’t all that bad, they just lacked pizazz. They were functional but they were pretty dull; they just didn’t grab your interest. I knew I could make them look so much better.
First, let’s identify what isn’t working and why.
There are a few reasons why these shelves lack any pizazz. First, there isn’t a cohesive color pallet throughout. The top shelf looks a bit kitschy and top heavy; it doesn’t really work with any of the other items on the remaining shelves.
There isn’t any visual weight to the items on the bottom two shelves and most of those items are all the same height. The bottom shelf just looks cluttered and disjointed from everything else. There really isn’t a cohesive theme to what is displayed on the shelves except that most of the items are barware.
Overall there isn’t anything really wrong with these shelves, they are just as dull as watching paint dry…yawn. To top it off, this hutch is one of the first things you see when you come in the front door. I want it to have more of a “wow” factor! I know I can do better.
Now take a look at the same shelves. Big difference, right? I think it looks so much better now!
Let’s take a look at why it’s working and what elements I used to create a much more visually appealing display.
Before you start, remove everything from the shelves, and I mean everything! It’s so much easier to style your shelves if you start with a clean slate.
Once you have cleared everything off, take a damp cloth and wipe down those shelves, get all that dust outta there! It’s also a great time to purge and get rid of some of those items you know you no longer want and won’t be using.
Now we can start with the fun part…styling those shelves!
1. Pick a theme.
Not a holiday theme, but an overall theme for your shelves; a transitional theme. If you need inspiration or you are just not sure about exactly what transitional decorating is, you can read all about it here. It’s not complicated or difficult to curate a transitional look in your home. It’s actually my favorite way of decorating my home!
In a dining room it makes sense to use dishes, barware, platters and stemware. Books and decorative items would look appropriate in a library or study. Baskets and decorative items would look best on shelves in a living room. Where the shelves are located in your home will play a big factor in determining what types of items to place on your shelves.
2. Use a very tight color pallet.
I went through all my china and decorative items. I pulled out only those items that were white or silver. I laid everything out on my dining room table so I could see what I had to work with. Limiting the color pallet will give your shelves a much more cohesive pulled together look.
3. Layer and vary the height of items.
I layered items to give each shelf more depth. I leaned silver and white platters along the back of each shelf, making sure to overlap some of them, and then placed smaller items in front of them. I placed some of the smaller items on coasters or stacks of small plates to vary the height of the items. Varying the height and layering various items makes a big visual difference. It will keep your displays looking much more interesting. It keeps the eye moving around the display. If everything is lined up in straight rows and they are all the same height it will lack visual interest and look flat. It will end up looking quite uninspired and boring.
Remember the before picture? Watching paint dry? Nuf said.
4. The rule of three.
On the top shelf I used a grouping of three items in the center of the shelf and flanked that central grouping with tall items on either side; a tall, narrow white vase on the left and a tall silver champagne bucket on the right.
I then used two groupings of three items on both of the two lower shelves for a balanced look. If you look closely you will see that I used groupings of three items on all of the shelves. Can you see them?
5. Balance & Flow.
It’s also important to keep balance in mind when styling shelves. I spread out the white and silver items but grouped them into clusters. To see what I mean check out the picture below.
Can you see how the white groupings flow from left to right to left down all the shelves and the silver items are grouped together from right to left to right down all three shelves? This creates balance throughout the display; it creates a sense of flow, and pulls everything together.
That’s it! You can apply these basic rules to any display in your home and have the same good results. I used these same exact principles for the china hutch in my formal dining room.
Relax, go ahead and give these rules a try. If you get stuck, walk away and come back to it later on. Taking a break will give you a fresh perspective. Keep playing around with your arrangements until you get it just right.
If something isn’t working, go down the list. Is the problem with layering? Are you grouping items in clusters of three? Is the problem with the color pallet? Did you vary the heights of items? Is there balance and flow in your arrangements? Use the list of rules to help you figure out what doesn’t seem to be working and you will get it right eventually.
There’s no time frame involved with this, just take your time until you are happy with what you have curated. Taking pictures helps too. It will help you see what your eye can’t see. I don’t understand how or why this works, but it does!
Let me know if these tips help you with creating beautiful designer displays in your home. I would love to see what you come up with. If you are stuck let me know and I will see if I can offer up some advice to get you unstuck.
Happy decorating!!!
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