Tips for Styling Shelves
Happy Monday y’all! Yesterday I decided to restyle our shelves in our breakfast nook bookshelf since it was looking very very crowded! As I was editing some of these items I realized that I do have some tips for styling shelves that I wanted to share with y’all!
This is what they looked like before.
A lot of the items you will notice are vintage with a little bit of nostalgia mixed in. This little nook is definitely more colorful than the rest of our house, but I love it!
I first took everything out from the shelves and gave them a good wipe down. I think it’s best to start with a clean slate when restyling shelves that way your mind doesn’t just put items back where it used to live because you’re used to seeing them there.
I then went through and edited what I wanted to take out. For example we had a book on dinosaurs that I thought we could do without for the time being. I then grouped the books by category like hardback, softback, and large books. I stacked the top shelf with some of the smaller hardback books in the middle of the shelf. Because I put those books in the middle I decided to start the other larger hardbacks on the left side of the middle shelf. By doing this your eye kind of goes from left to right creating a zig zag pattern with similar items.
I then took some of the larger pieces and started playing around with where they needed to go. I had a vintage camera case that I thought would look great on the bottom shelf, and then in the middle of the shelves I placed this bike I found at Goodwill as the focal point. I like that this item allows the white of the shelf to shine through. You don’t want your shelves to be so crowded that you can’t appreciate each piece.
I also layered some items. For example, I had this green file box that I just think is so cool, but on its own it kind of looks sad, so I added this clock on top. Before I didn’t really have any greenery on these shelves so I found one of my cement planters and added some greenery to it. Adding greenery will liven up any space.
Tips Recap:
- Clear out shelves completely
- Edit the items you have
- Space similar items in a zig zag pattern so your eye doesn’t focus on just one item
- Layer Items. For example: placing an item on top of another item like the clock on the green file box or the radio flyer wagon on the stack of books
- Add greenery to liven up the shelves
- Space out your color. As you notice I have pops of red dispersed on each shelf and not altogether on one shelf.
Thank you for flying by my nest today! Have a wonderful week little birdies!
xoxo,
Robyn
