Divide and conquer with chic, contemporary shelving to suit any home
Image: Good Homes/Andrew Boyd
Spirit level in one hand, hammer in the other, putting up shelves can completely transform the both the feel of a room and its practical potential – especially if you’re clever about it.
These five ideas will show you how you can take your storage to the next level; from a clever alcove arrangement to half walls and a design perfect for a child’s bedroom, displaying your everyday items will never be boring again.
Stagger alcove shelves
Image: Good Homes/Andrew Boyd
This neat trick breaks up traditional linear shelving and creates bespoke niches, tailored exactly to your needs. Remember to display tall items that will reach above the next shelf to give your displays movement and modernity, and you needn’t go for the evenly-spaced arrangement above – experiment with different shelf lengths and heights for a more higgeldy-piggeldy, creative look.
Let’s go low
Image: Good Homes/Andrew Boyd
Who said that all shelving should be at eye-level? Try something completely different and fit a continuous low shelf across one wall. Paint the shelf itself and the wall underneath a rich grey hue, tuck storage boxes underneath and display vases, books and trinkets along the length. It also gives you a great excuse to not worry about hanging up art prints – you can just lean them against the wall instead.
Shape it up
Image: Good Homes/Max Attenborough
Ideal for kids’ bedrooms or nurseries, design your own MDF backdrop to frame floating shelves. Trees work well, as do hearts, clouds, houses, animals and even fish. For a more grown-up space, stick to simple shapes such as circles, squares and triangles. If DIY isn’t quite your thing, get in touch with a local carpenter and design your shape on graph paper so they can scale it up to whatever size you wish.
Panel halfway
Image: Good Homes/Malcom Menzies
Panelling adds character and structure to any room, modern or traditional, and if you only go halfway up and add wooden capping, it doubles up as a beautiful display space too. Just remember to measure your widest vase or largest book and make sure the ledge is deep enough to hold them.
