Shelves, shelves & more shelves

How do you go about staging shelves? I wish I was a professional decorator so this post could be a step by step how to get perfect decorative shelves. But I am not. I only know a few guidelines to go by. So if you are like me and don't really know what you are doing, here are a few things to remember...
 
1.) Think about balance.
In my living room, I have two sets of built in shelves that flank my windows. They each have five shelves. Notice how on three of the shelves there is something going across the whole shelf but on the other two, the books only go across half way. When using both sides of the shelf I made sure to skip every other shelf to break it up.
 
2.) Think about color.
I painted the back of the shelves black to bring more attention to what the shelves are holding. See how the white items pop against the black back ground? I broke up all the darkness on the fourth shelf with that tin picture and white mat. I also separated the books by color to add more color blocking affects.

3.) Think about proportion.
This is the other side of the window. I think they built it smaller just to irritate me. Why cant they be the same size! Due to this side being smaller I made sure not to use a giant item that would take up all the back ground. I didn't want anything looking too big and squished.

 

4.) Think about height.

This is a small latter shelf that lives in my living room. I used the tall pineapple on the left and balanced that out with the tall antique doll on the right. For color, I love how the wooden doll pops against the different color books in the background. The red vintage bus unites that shelf with the one below it because of the red book.

 

 

5.) Think about pieces you LOVE.

A picture of my husbands father (who is no longer with us) sits on the top shelf, along with the monogram for our last name. Below that is a birdhouse my father built for my late grandmothers craft business. These things are very special to us. Incorporate the things you love and you cant go wrong. For color, I stacked yellow books by the yellow art.

 

 

6.) Think about groups of three.

For some reason unknown to me, groups of three are more aesthetically pleasing. Notice the three jars holding my office supplies sitting on three books. Next to that I have 1 frame and 2 bottles =3 with three magazine holders next to that. You can bet that I will be adding a third globe as soon as I find one I like. Hahaha

 

 

Here we have the rule of three again with the two pieces of art and one bottle. I also kept in mind the height as I used a large canvas to fill the space and reach up to the globes height to balance them. I am not even going to talk about where I added the color! Hahaha!! I know, my office has so much color its blinding. How else will I stay awake and get work done?

 

 

On my Ikea shelves I kept height in mind by turning a painting on its side. This way it looked in proportion with the skinny long train painting. I also propped my lamp on a stack of books to make it appear taller and line up with the top of the painting. This gave it more balance.

 

 

What cool shelves have you staged lately? Do you like to redo them often? I know some people switch them up every few weeks. I'm not one for moving things around allot. It takes me a long time to put something together that I love so I'm afraid to change it. Have a fun foot ball filled weekend!

 

Stay Humble

Amber