Styling shelves is an art that can elevate the aesthetic of any room, adding personality and charm. However, achieving a polished, designer look can be challenging. The key is to start from scratch, thoughtfully gather your items, and use strategic placement to create balance and visual interest. In this guide, we'll walk you through the steps to style your shelves like a pro. From selecting anchors and varying heights to balancing textures and avoiding clutter, you'll learn how to curate a cohesive and stylish display that reflects your taste and enhances your space.

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Start from scratch and gather your items

Before you begin, remove everything from your shelves and start fresh. We like to gather all of the items that could possibly work on the shelf in one spot to take stock. To make the display feel cohesive it can be helpful to narrow in on a color palette. 

Add your Anchors

Your largest pieces are going to serve as the foundation of the shelf styling and are the best place to start. An anchor can be a stack of books, a piece of art, or a large decorative object. You’ll want to place your anchors on the shelves with attention to balance—don’t put them all one side or all down the middle, alternate the placement on either side of the shelves.

Vary Heights, Shapes, and Textures

Once your anchors are in place, you can start to fill in with other pieces. You’ll want to simultaneously take it shelf by shelf while also looking at the entire composition of the shelves together. It’s important here to keep things varied so that it has dimensions, vary the heights of the pieces, the shapes, and textures. 

The clutter balance

To avoid a cluttered feeling, we like to use mostly larger scaled items in our shelves and layer in small pieces sparling. A shelf filled with predominantly small items will start to feel a bit random and uncollected. Corralling objects in groups helps make smaller items feel cohesive.

Once your larger foundational pieces are in, we like to add smaller pieces with intention. Corralling objects on top of books or in groups of 2 or more can help these pieces feel more cohesive rather than cluttered.



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