Open shelving is the perfect way to display your treasures, but at the same time it can seem pretty daunting. There can definitely be a fine line between perfectly styled, and a cluttered mess! So after a little shuffle of my open shelves in the kitchen, I thought I’d share my top tips for styling your open shelves.
1) Pick a theme
Your shelves need to look organised and carefully curated to avoid that “I just dumped everything here” look. Pick a theme for the items you use, it could be that its a simple as being all vintage kitchenellia or just all neutral shades or all green tones, you need that loose theme to tie everything together.
2) Different heights
When placing your items, vary the heights across your shelves, it helps to draw your eye and helps the items to sit more comfortably together. If you keep everything the same height it can lose interest and be more like a storage shelf. You can even add height by stacking your items. Also adding height or something like the plant in my photo which hangs down, helps to bring the shelves together, think of it as the items are reaching out to the other shelves and linking them together.
3) Colour placement
Even if you have limited colours or lots of colours, colour placement is really important. You want to vary where you put your colour, I’ve got a little bit of green on my shelves, and I’ve made sure to spread it out between the shelves, so that it links the shelves together and makes them like a family. I don’t want to have a certain colour just on one shelf, as it can make it feel awkward, remember these shelves are meant to be a family, and family members all have a little hint of each other.
4) Layers
Even though we want the eye to move freely over the items on the shelves, we also want it so that it makes you pause and soak up the detail. Layer your items, I like to add items behind others, like how I’ve added the framed and baking tins behind other items on my shelves.
5) Where to start
You may be thinking, but I don’t even know how to start?! I start by getting out all of the items I could maybe use on my shelves, so that I can see everything I have to work with. I’ll then pick 3 items, and cluster them together on the shelf, and I’ll maybe keep swapping an item out until those 3 items work together, and then from there I will work my way out on the shelf. When I move onto the next shelf, I will look at the one opposite or above and see where the shelf “sits heavy” and then on this shelf, I will put my heavier or bulkier items on the opposite side- it helps to balance the shelves out. If you have a look at my photos above, on one shelf I have the bulky scales on the left hand side of the top shelf. I added these and then immediately added the large copper kettle to the shelf underneath but on the opposite side, so that the shelves immediately looked balance, even before I’d added everything else!
6) Step back!
Lastly, step back! I have to use ladders to do these shelves, and I am forever stepping back to look at how I’ve placed them, it helps me to see how and where to balance them, and to see what is sitting comfortably or what needs to be moved.
I hope this post offered some good points for how to style open shelves. Do you have any tips too? Add them in the comments below!
Much love
Natasha x
