How to Decorate Shelves: 6 Shelf Décor Ideas for Your Home

Shelf decorations can make for lively and hospitable home décor. Barren shelves suggest a lack of interest in these spaces throughout your house. Styling shelves can also be useful—you can place multipurpose decorations on shelves in specific rooms to fulfill pragmatic purposes, such as placing clocks to tell time or bookends to keep your books from falling.

If you’re interested in adding visual interest to your shelves, consider these three basic shelf styling tips:

1. 1. Examine the utility. Each room in your house serves a different purpose, and the shelves therein should reflect that. The shelves in your dining room can store decorative plates, bowls, and the like, whereas a shelf by your entryway can house candles and keychains side by side. A bathroom shelf can hold both purely aesthetic decorations as well as toiletries, while the shelves in a home office might be a place for family photos or heirloom pencil sharpeners.
2. 2. Strike a balance. Depending on your design style, you might prefer more or less on your shelves—but you should avoid too much dead space or clutter. You can still pepper mostly open shelves with decorations, whereas you might want to use those same materials sparingly on a more crowded shelf.
3. 3. Think about the color scheme. Anything you place on your shelves should gel well with the paint color palette of the shelves themselves and the room overall. Clashing colors can cause distraction and displease the eye. Consult a color wheel or other resources to see which hues go well together.

Certain kinds of shelves fit certain purposes or styles better than others.

1. 1. Floating shelves: For a minimalist new look, consider getting wall shelves. Floating shelves are thick boards that go right into the wall itself, giving the appearance that they’re floating in midair.
2. 2. Hanging shelves: Rather than anchor an entire set of shelving units into the wall, you can hang certain types instead. Hanging shelves usually dangle from a string of some kind. They make for decent kitchen shelves, considering they’re fairly unobtrusive and can hang close to where you’re cooking.
3. 3. Modern farmhouse shelves: These rustic wood shelves are part of a larger wave of design ideas that combine up-to-date sleekness with a more classic, homespun look. Farmhouse décor like this works best if you commit to it as a general aesthetic—farmhouse shelves on their own may look out of place in contrast with another interior design style.
4. 4. Storage shelves: When you need to store plenty of things, you might want to consider storage shelves. These can be very basic in appearance or a bit more ornate, but their defining characteristic is how much shelf space they have available. They’re especially useful in garages or as kitchen décor.

There are countless options when decorating your shelves. Here are six shelf décor items you can consider:

1. 1. Bookends: While many people use books to fill up their bookcases, bookends are an elegant feature worth adding. They’re also useful for when you don’t have enough books to fill up the total shelf—you can sandwich all the books on your top or bottom shelf between the bookends and place other decorations beside them as well. Choose bookshelf décor that fits your personality or interests.
2. 2. Candleholders: For bedroom décor, in particular, consider candlesticks or candleholders for your shelves. These decorative pieces allow you to forgo electrical lighting as you read or relax before bed. As with candles themselves, candleholders fit in most other rooms of the house, too.
3. 3. Figurines: Give your living or family room a makeover by placing some figurines or miniature sculptures on the coffee table and nearby shelves. Three-dimensional art like this can give your visitors something pleasant to view when they visit your home.
4. 4. Greenery: Plants, succulents, and flowers make for some of the best decorative objects. Add real or imitation ones to ceramic vases or pots and place them on shelves throughout your home. Placing plants near your house’s entryway can be a great way to welcome new guests.
5. 5. Picture frames: Shelves are the perfect place to store picture frames. Whether you fill them with family photos or artistic DIY projects, you can add these frames to just about any room in your home.
6. 6. Vignettes: These decorative items can be just about anything you want them to be. Vignettes, in the interior design sense, are simply decorations grouped together with intention. Experiment with a panoply of shelf decorations and pair them together for this purpose.

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