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:

1. Clear out shelves completely
2. Edit the items you have
3. Space similar items in a zig zag pattern so your eye doesn’t focus on just one item
4. 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
5. Add greenery to liven up the shelves
6. 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