How to Style Your Bookshelf
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Rearranging your bookshelf or a large set of shelves can be daunting. But once you get started, you just might find yourself having a lot of fun and enjoying the time you take to place your most beautiful items in the best places. It’s even better when you can decorate your shelves for display as well as use them for storage -- especially for items you want to keep hidden like toys or your giant stash of blankets. (In oversized baskets of course!)
When I take on the task of tackling a bookshelf, my main goal is to keep it cohesive, collected, and colorful!
1. Keep it Cohesive!
Choosing the items you display on your shelves is an important step during your restyle and you want to choose a unified set of items that make sense together. You also want to make sure you fill your bookshelf with items you love - balancing your color palette as well as the texture and size of your pieces as they sit next to each other.
Some of my favorite items to decorate my bookshelves with include:
2. Keep it Collected!
This is a great opportunity to display special collections, small heirlooms, or small antiques. Mixing in older pieces with new gives a collected feel and keeps it from feeling too stale. Each pocket of your shelf should have a sense of good balance and symmetry. Don’t overcrowd your shelves, rather play with the space and see which items pair the best together. And make sure to keep the messy stuff you don’t want seen in your baskets below. A bookshelf looks best when it’s well organized!
3. Keep it Colorful!
You can have a basic color palette (like naturals and whites with an accent or two of blue) or you can have a playful one (like every color in the rainbow), just make sure to pick colors that speak to you and give character to your new shelf display as well as the space it’s in. One of the best ways to show off how cohesive and collected your shelves are is to pick colors that work together.
When you step back to take a look at your work, fix anything that seems off. Finding the right balance is key, and it can take some trial and error to get it to the point where everything feels good. And, if you still feel like it’s missing something, play it up with a plant or two!
Need ideas on how to organize and store your children’s toys? Check out my Toy Organization Favorites.
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