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Seven Tips for Pro Shelf Styling

Seven Tips for Pro Shelf Styling

Bari J. Home {Shelf Styling}

I have a lot of fun styling anything, but I particularly love styling shelves. Shelving can make a big impact in your home and it gives you a spot to display collections. I don't love collections willy nilly spread about my home, but I do love them together where they'll have meaning and impact.

Around my home, I was finding that I had a plethora of pitchers and urns/vases in white. There's even more on the top shelf not pictured here. I also have cutting/cheese boards galore. I have a real thing for them. I pick them up everywhere and bring them home. So I decided in this display I would use them. Here's a few tips for how I pull it all together.

1. Pick a color scheme. I picked white and wood.

2. Find a shape of an object that can be repeated throughout your display. Here you see the urn shape, the pitcher shape and rectangles. 

3. Find like items that may vary in scale or shape. The pitchers and urns are all different sizes, and I've added one wood cutting board that is round for variation on the theme.

4. Follow the rule of thirds. Things look better displayed in odd numbers. You'll notice on the second shelf where I have two pitchers and two cutting boards I added a very small wood bowl underneath the cutting boards to balance out the shelf. Note: It's wood. And white would have worked as well. 

5. Vary heights. See on the bottom shelf how the pitcher and the urn are really about the same height. To fix that I added the white plates underneath. This would have worked with some books as well. And I may have turned the books paper side out instead of the spine to use the white as opposed to whatever book color I was using.

6. Add little pops of color. Yesterday I purchased some flowers, so I filled one of the vases with those. There's some orange in there, so I put the tangerines in the bowl below to repeat that theme. I also added two plants to the display. Note, the objects below are wood and there's another urn shape. The little salt and pepper shakers seemed like a nice balance there as well and added a tiny bit of color.

7. Fill "bonus" spaces if necessary using color or shape repetitions. This bit depends on your own space. Sometimes if you do this it will look like clutter... here it was necessary. On the left side of my shelves there's this small cut out that goes further back. We have zero idea why it's there, and it looked a little odd, so I had my husband hang the shelves justified to the right. My thinking was I could make that space look intentional or have some interest. Then there's the wall to the left. Lord knows I couldn't leave that blank. More is more, yo! There I decided to repeat the round shape of that one cheese board. I simply put my newest fabric line, Sage, in five embroidery hoops and hung them. The hoops go all the way up the wall to look like an intentional collection.

Side note... the wall outside the actual display...

Bari J. shelf styling

This wall seems very much a part of this display since it is right next to it. You visually can't avoid this wall. Here I have a collection of mirrors in wood frames. The don't add too much extra color but they do have a little pop. Mirrors help add light and dimension to a space. Ironically, the area with the shelves used to have full mirrors glued on the walls. It was totes 1970 in here. I insisted those suckers get removed. Lived with them for five years and then BEGGED the sweet hub to remove them.

 

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1 comment

  • Lucy ~ Charm About You

    So interesting! I loved reading these tips and all the little details that really make it work beautifully!

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