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Shelf decor can feel overwhelming when you have a new space with beautiful open shelves to fill and no idea where to start.
At this point, I think I’ve styled hundreds, maybe thousands of different open shelves. I always try to plan everything out ahead of time and bring along only exactly what I’ll need when we arrive at a home for shoot day, but more often than not, I find that I need to make slight readjustments to my plans for cabinets and wall-mounted floating shelves when I’m actually on-site for a number of different reasons. Since I don’t have a lot of time to ponder, I need to know how to make things work in an instant, and this method that I’ve outlined below always guides me in the right direction, from the planning phases all the way through to those unexpected last-minute final bookcase accent adjustments. When it comes to shelf decor, I can’t count how many homeowners have commented that, after seeing how I styled their decorative shelf, they now know how to do it the “right” way. I can’t stress enough that there really is no right way other than the way that makes you happy in your own home. If you find that you like the cohesive look of professionally styled shelves, though, this method will make it easy to bring that style into your own home.
I find that people often automatically use their wall shelf as shelf wall storage or as a display shelf for displaying knick-knacks, necessities, and everyday objects, especially in a small-space home when what they’re really hoping for is a stylish spot to co-ordinate with all their carefully chosen rugs, pillows, lamps, curtains, and other furnishings. This method really helps to bring clarity to the decor process to help you achieve the look you really want.
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The Simplest Method for Shelf Decor
These steps will help you style your open shelving beautifully and thoughtfully in a way that’s straightforward and easy for anyone to execute. I’ll go over each step of the process in more detail below.
- Measure your shelves
- Determine the number of groupings per shelf
- Add grounded groupings
- Add final objects
- Give it the NOD of approval (natural elements, objects you love, diagonal repetition)
Read on for details about completing each step in the process. When you’re finished, I promise you’ll love the way your shelves look.
Measure Your Shelves
The purpose of measuring your shelves is to determine the number of decor groupings to add when you decorate your shelves. There’s a bit of wiggle room to this formula, and you should ultimately decorate your home in a way that looks just right to you, but measuring your shelves will give you a guide and a starting point for knowing how many things to add to your shelves, and where to put them.
More inspiration for adding decorative accents to your bookshelves: Bookshelf Wealth is the Trend That Needs to Not be Just a Trend
Determine the Number of Groupings to Add to Each Shelf
A “grouping” is a group of about two to four objects that you place on the shelf close together. They typically will relate to each other in some way, whether they’re similar in size, color, or shape, objects of the same type, or whether they just look really good together.
The number of groupings that you add to each shelf will be determined by the width of the shelf.
- If your shelves are approximately 12″-30″, use a single grouping centered in the middle of the shelf.
- For shelves approximately 30″-48″ wide, use two groupings
- For 48″-60″ or wider, use two to three groupings.
Grouping heights and widths can differ depending on the amount of space available on each shelf, but generally, the more space available to fill, the larger the items in the grouping should be. You can see below that these shelves were very wide, and I styled them with two large groupings on each, leaving plenty of negative space between each grouping to show the beautiful vertical shiplap walls behind.
Add Grounded Groupings
Grounded groupings are necessary for making a design feel finished, cohesive, and polished. They make the overall design feel “right” instead of cluttered and add mini focal points to your decor scheme.
To create a grounded grouping, you want to anchor your objects with a larger object behind, which makes the smaller objects in a grouping feel less like they were just stuck randomly on your shelf without rhyme or reason.
Larger items that you’ll use to anchor your groupings can be items like a framed print or painting, mirrors, a favorite coffee table book with the front cover facing out, wood boards and bowls, or large, wide pieces of sculpture.
You can see a small walnut cutting-board grouping below with a black vase and shaker in matching finishes. The stained kitchen shelves are then filled in with glassware, serveware, and other decorations.
Hint: The less decorative the finish is on the wall behind your shelves, the more grounded groupings you’ll need. If you have beautiful tile, millwork, or wallpaper, you may not need many at all.
Add Final Objects
To finish your shelf styling, continue adding decorative objects in groups rather than just filling the rest of the space with single items. You’ll know the number of final groupings that you should add based on your measurements and calculations in the first two steps.
Groups can be made up of objects that look like they “should” go together, like a set of two to three matching vases or canisters that come in different sizes, or they can be items that you just decide look good together, like plants in dark planters paired with a small sculptural piece in the same shade. A group of matching photo frames, a pair of candles, or a beautiful bowl on top of a stack of books are always easy, fool-proof decorating options as well for a wood shelf or picture ledge.
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Give Your Shelf Decor the NOD of Approval
Once you have all your different elements in place, you’ll want to give everything one last look to make sure that things are arranged so that they look their best and create a lovely composition overall. This is what I call giving it the NOD of approval. In this case, NOD stands for:
N- Natural elements
O- Objects you love
D- Diagonal repetition
It’s important that you include some kind of natural element in every styling composition. The eye is tuned to look for resting places, and the resting places that it searches for are things like plants, greenery, and other natural elements. These can be real or faux, but I think you’ll find over time that real often looks so much better. Use dried blooms, grasses, and seed pods if you’re looking for no-maintenance solutions.
Secondly, you’ll want to check that you’ve included things in your styling that you actually like. This might seem obvious, but it can be so easy to get caught up with getting things “right” that you just run out and find whatever items fit the criteria that you’re looking for in terms of style, height, color, etc. If you can make sure that the majority of your items are actually objects you love to look at, you’ll be guaranteed to love the overall look when your shelves are filled.
Finally, check your composition for diagonal repetition. This means that items with similar qualities should be repeated throughout your design for cohesiveness, and you want them to be located at a diagonal from each other to help draw the eye around the whole design. Plants should be at a diagonal from other plants in most cases; grounded groupings should be diagonal from one another, as well as items of the same color or material.
For the white shelf in the kitchen above, I used dried seed pod branches, earthy ceramics, and espresso-stained wood elements to add warmth to my repeating diagonal elements.
Do you ever have trouble figuring out how to style the open shelves in your home?
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.