Hey hey hey!  The sun is shining today and you have no idea how excited I am to chat with you.  I didn’t think this post was going to happen this week but woo hoo, it did!  Today is Wow Me On The Weekend – How To Style Shelves.  I’m not only talking about open shelves.  I mean all of them; open shelves, built-ins and stand alone shelves as well.  There’s no reason they can’t all look amazing!

Wow Me On The Weekend – How To Style Shelves

I often hear friends and clients ask what to put on shelves and wonder why their shelves don’t look like what they see in a magazine.  I can help with that!  It doesn’t always come out right the first time or come together in 20 minutes.  Sometimes it’s a long process.  You need to find the right items that work together instead of against each other.  It also depends on where the shelves are located.  Let’s analyze a few.

Source: Home Bunch

Not only is the contrast with the black and white shelving beautiful but they kept with the same color theme with the decor items.  The black and white photos, white dishware and the golden wood and brass piece at the top keeps your eye moving around from space to space.  If you want your shelves to look like this, notice the layering of the photos and how the warm tones form a triangle.  Imagine if everything was placed equally apart and was all the same height… Bland.

Source: Jenny Reimold

These shelves show great proportion and mixing up shape.  See how the larger heavier items (basket on right and wood corbels on left) are on the bottom?  If they were placed at the top the shelves would look heavy and droopy.  Much like bushy eyebrows.  You need to keep those trimmed so your eyes are lifted and you look happy instead of like a grump.  Yeah, I could have come up with a better analogy but I bet you’ll have a hard time forgetting that one.  😉  Notice too that her decor items are not only neutral in color but have different shapes.  If everything had hard square edges, it would look just like that – hard.  Round items like vases, bowls, orbs and clocks are perfect choices.

Source: Le Cultivateur

Another way to style shelves perfectly is with subtle seasons in mind and using depth.  If you saw this fabulously decorated shelf during fall it would fit right in without being in-your-face-fall looking.  Emily used color with books, wood and leaves instead of your typical retail finds.  And the way she has added depth is perfect.  In some areas there are 4 layers.  Look on the top right.  She has flat prints hanging on the wall (layer 1) then the tall corbel in front of that (layer 2).  The pedestal bowl is layer 3 and the small creamer and small cup are layer 4.

Source: Ballard Designs

Remember when I said where your shelving is located also makes a difference?  Here is that example.  If you have shelves in your kitchen or dining room, it’s best to use decorative items that relate to a kitchen or dining room.  Maybe not a bowl of potatoes like they have here but this shelving unit says homey, warm dining and isn’t that what the dining and kitchen area is all about?  Serving pieces, bowls, cutting boards, cake plates, fruit and cookbooks are all great ideas for these shelves in this room.  If you had a shelf or two in a game room, it would be more appropriate to have things that pertain to games or movies on those shelves.  Keep like things together.

Source: A Beautiful Mess

And do you recall when I said shelves don’t come together in 20 minutes?  Well unless you go to a store or an estate sale that has everything you want right then and there, you’re going on a treasure hunt which takes time.  This collection was curated over time.  It works because hello, it’s fantabulous!  It’s full of color, it makes a pattern, the collection has varied heights, has depth and has quite the wow factor.  Makes me want to start collecting colored glass even though I have nowhere to put another thing on my shelves.

With today’s wow me on the weekend – how to style shelves, did you learn anything?  Are you ready to tackle your shelves?  I hope so!  If you’d like to see other posts in this series, just search Wow Me On The Weekend and it will pull them up.  If you have any questions or want help with a topic we haven’t discussed yet, email me or let me know in the comments.  Thanks for stopping by!

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