**The Art of Shelf Styling: A Guide to Creating a Beautiful and Functional Space**

When it comes to decorating a room, one of the most overlooked yet impactful elements is the shelf. With so many different styles and options available, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. In this article, we'll explore the rules and tips for styling a shelf that will make your space look beautiful and functional.

**Choosing the Right Color Scheme**

The first step in styling a shelf is to choose a color scheme that reflects your personal style and complements your room's overall aesthetic. If you're unsure about your color scheme, take a closer look at the colors in your room. You might be surprised at how easily you can incorporate them into your shelving. Our friend Adeline, who recently worked with us on a shelf styling project, used her own home decor store finds to create a beautiful and cohesive look. Her shelves featured a mix of blues, terracotta, greenery, and white, which created a calming and natural ambiance in the room.

**Layering and Height**

One of the key elements of successful shelf styling is layering and height. By placing objects of different heights and textures on your shelf, you can create visual interest and depth. For example, Adeline used a plant on top of a box to add height to her shelves, while also creating a sense of stability. She also layered items from front to back to create a sense of movement and energy.

**The Power of Medium-Sized Objects**

Another important element of shelf styling is using medium-sized objects to bridge the gap between large and small items. These objects can help to tie together disparate elements on your shelf, creating a cohesive look that's both visually appealing and functional. By using these medium-sized objects, you can create a sense of balance and harmony in your space.

**Letting Your Colors Breathe**

Finally, remember that it's okay to not use every single color from your palette on every single shelf. In fact, our friend Adeline discovered that letting her colors breathe – or at least not using them all at once – can create a more natural and effortless look. By leaving some space for other colors, you can add visual interest and depth to your shelves without overwhelming the senses.

**Don't Worry About Perfection**

One of the most important things to remember when it comes to shelf styling is that perfection is not necessary. In fact, our friend Adeline discovered that sometimes, imperfections are what make a space truly unique and beautiful. By embracing your personal style and not being afraid to get creative, you can create a shelf that's truly one-of-a-kind.

**The Three B's: Books, Botanicals, and Baskets**

When it comes to styling a shelf, there are a few key elements that we recommend incorporating into your space. These include books, botanicals, and baskets – the three b's. By adding these elements to your shelves, you can create a beautiful and functional space that reflects your personality and style.

**A Solo Shelf: How to Style a Shelf Without Built-Ins**

Not everyone is lucky enough to have built-ins in their home, but that doesn't mean you can't create a beautiful and stylish shelf. Our friend Adeline recently worked on a solo shelf project, and we were blown away by the end result. By choosing a color scheme, layering objects of different heights and textures, and incorporating medium-sized objects to bridge gaps, she was able to create a space that looked both cohesive and unique.

**Don't Be Afraid to Get Personal**

Finally, don't be afraid to show off your personal style on your shelves. Our friend Adeline's solo shelf project included her favorite books, journaling supplies, and even some personal mementos – all of which added to the space's personality and charm. By incorporating items that reflect your interests and hobbies, you can create a shelf that truly feels like you.

**Conclusion**

Styling a shelf is an art form that requires patience, creativity, and a willingness to experiment. By following our guide to the three b's – books, botanicals, and baskets – layering and height, and letting your colors breathe, you can create a beautiful and functional space that reflects your personality and style. Remember, perfection is not necessary – imperfections are what make a space truly unique and beautiful. So don't be afraid to try new things, take risks, and have fun with the process!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enokay yeah we can do that hi everyone my name is kelsey and my name is becky and we are the sorry girls and today we have a really exciting video that i think almost everyone can benefit from and that is help with styling our shelves the problem with shelves is that they're usually tall they're up on the wall they draw our eye upwards and we look at them and they're beautiful but we usually just kind of use them as a functional thing and not so much as like a styling point honestly up until now we've kind of left this to chance we just looked at a shelf thought it looked good maybe it's okay i've struggled with this in the past when i did my guest bedroom makeover at my parents house i just like didn't do a close-up on the shelves because i got so frustrated and i didn't know what to do and it wasn't looking just right but i was like i gotta finish this i'm just gonna move on and not show everybody what it looks like so we've taken all our knowledge of styling shelves over the years and put them together in some tips that are easy to follow we have a list of rules that everyone can do that's pretty much guaranteed to get yourselves looking good so in this episode we're going to show you how to style your shelves whether you have like a single little shelf or a giant built-in so you guys might remember adeline who we love so much we've done a couple style selected episodes with her and we actually helped style her shelving for christmas season a couple months ago so she actually reached out to us again sent us a text saying hey girls i need help turning these christmas shelves into summer shelves so alan don't worry we got you so knowing that adeline already had a lot of great pieces that already worked for her shelves we hit the thrift store to find some replacements for the items that were a little bit too wintry or christmassy okay so we're in the car with adeline we're on our way to the thrift store which is the first place we like to go it's the most affordable you can find really unique things there and then you're not spending like a million dollars on shelf but like seriously we buy like one little thing and each little thing is only like ten eight dollars for like a little plant a little this little that that adds up adds up it's always a really good idea to figure out what color scheme you want to go with first to help give your shopping some direction i like gold white maybe greenery and then maybe a little splash of yellow okay yeah we can do that this is such a huge thrift store got last car important oh my gosh that's it for when you're shopping if you have no idea where to start try picking up a variety of items look for books baskets bowls and botanicals we're hunting over white books this one it looks like it's not white but it is and then we don't have to paint them here's a tip don't overlook things at thrift store that maybe are dirty or the wrong color because almost everything can be cleaned and almost everything can be painted they could be spray painted gold are they your style are they i love that too traditionally you like them i especially love this i feel like this is my favorite thing that we found it's cool she's 6.99 she's a little scary but we'll wash her so here's a tip we like to lay out everything that we picked to see how it looks together and sort through anything that we may or may not need anymore and next we're going to head to the home decor store to pick up any extras that we couldn't end up thrifting just getting info for diys i can do with all these straws that end up in landfills strawberry art um just want to share a hot tip with you because we just came out of the actual home decor store and the total there was like 1 30. 1 15. in total there fire me and the total at the real home decor store was like 117 and our total thrift store was like 130. but we got almost double the amount of items one item really it's like so much better value to go to the thrift store yeah and then we went to the craft store which is our favorite place to get good faux plants it's important to know your fake flowers too for shelf styling like this looks like a bunch of real chopped flowers which goes in a vase or there's this which is more of a droopy variety which is useful for laying on the edge of a shelf they can hang down all right now we're back at adeline's and it's time to lay everything out and sort everything out and pull out the things that need to be diy yeah that's so good you got some books got some books covers are coming off of those and may be painted they might not need to be painted yeah that'd be awesome like this one beautiful all right so now we have all of our items ready to go let's get to the official story girls rules of styling a shelf all right first up is color scheme your room probably has a color scheme already so you might as well bring that into your shelving as well try to use layering whenever you can think about layering from the front to the back of the shelf as well as from the left to the right of the shelf and make sure to use medium sized objects to bridge the gap between really big things and really small things a rule that we quickly discovered was to let your colors breathe you don't have to have like every single color on every single shelf you can have some shelves that are a little breath of fresh air from your entire color palette so our next rule is don't worry about spacing everything perfectly evenly things actually tend to look better when you put them into groups on your shelves make sure that you're not afraid to get personal or show some of your hobbies you can show cameras or stationary and pens whatever you're into so here's a fun one we discovered groups of odd numbers tend to look a lot nicer so maybe try that out alright and remember that rule of having a variety of items if you need help getting started remember the three b's books botanicals and baskets and the very last rule is that you don't have to follow these rules styling shelves is all a matter of personal taste so if you like how it's looking go for it and have fun all right adeline's built-ins look amazing i'm really happy with how this turned out but i know not all of us have built-ins including me so this is how you can apply these rules to a solo shelf all right so first up we're definitely going to stick to a color scheme which is more like blues terracotta plants and greenery and of course white and some of these books aren't fitting the color scheme so i'm just going to flip them around and now they look neutral and only show off the ones that are fitting the vibe so here we're playing with height and layering by placing this plant on top of a box as well as layering from the front to back with this picture frame in the back don't be afraid to gather your items they don't have to be laid out perfectly they kind of want to be friends too so gather a couple of your items together it's going to make things look a little bit more natural we're leaving our journaling supplies out because don't forget to show your hobbies groups of odd numbers tend to look a little bit better so here we added a third item and remember if you're ever stuck go with the three b's books baskets and botanicals see it's easy as that and now the shelf looks styling and cute and effortless but lots of effort i hope you guys learned something from this video honestly i did yeah i totally did it's nice to see everything that we knew in our heads put down in an actual formula i think this is going to help us going forward as well definitely and if you guys want to check out adeline you definitely should she did like a little vlog process and just her videos are so bright and beautiful and yellow i love them send us your hashtag shelfies on instagram using stash like sorry girl squad because we want to see how you style your shelves because i'm always down to get more inspo mm-hmm all right thanks so much for watching this video guys if you liked it make sure that you give it a like and if you love it make sure you sub it and we will see you next time bye bye hi guys welcome to the end slate just wanted to give bridget a massive shout out for rocking our nervous laugh tea it looks so unbelievably good on you check the link in the description to find out where you can get your own nervous laugh teaokay yeah we can do that hi everyone my name is kelsey and my name is becky and we are the sorry girls and today we have a really exciting video that i think almost everyone can benefit from and that is help with styling our shelves the problem with shelves is that they're usually tall they're up on the wall they draw our eye upwards and we look at them and they're beautiful but we usually just kind of use them as a functional thing and not so much as like a styling point honestly up until now we've kind of left this to chance we just looked at a shelf thought it looked good maybe it's okay i've struggled with this in the past when i did my guest bedroom makeover at my parents house i just like didn't do a close-up on the shelves because i got so frustrated and i didn't know what to do and it wasn't looking just right but i was like i gotta finish this i'm just gonna move on and not show everybody what it looks like so we've taken all our knowledge of styling shelves over the years and put them together in some tips that are easy to follow we have a list of rules that everyone can do that's pretty much guaranteed to get yourselves looking good so in this episode we're going to show you how to style your shelves whether you have like a single little shelf or a giant built-in so you guys might remember adeline who we love so much we've done a couple style selected episodes with her and we actually helped style her shelving for christmas season a couple months ago so she actually reached out to us again sent us a text saying hey girls i need help turning these christmas shelves into summer shelves so alan don't worry we got you so knowing that adeline already had a lot of great pieces that already worked for her shelves we hit the thrift store to find some replacements for the items that were a little bit too wintry or christmassy okay so we're in the car with adeline we're on our way to the thrift store which is the first place we like to go it's the most affordable you can find really unique things there and then you're not spending like a million dollars on shelf but like seriously we buy like one little thing and each little thing is only like ten eight dollars for like a little plant a little this little that that adds up adds up it's always a really good idea to figure out what color scheme you want to go with first to help give your shopping some direction i like gold white maybe greenery and then maybe a little splash of yellow okay yeah we can do that this is such a huge thrift store got last car important oh my gosh that's it for when you're shopping if you have no idea where to start try picking up a variety of items look for books baskets bowls and botanicals we're hunting over white books this one it looks like it's not white but it is and then we don't have to paint them here's a tip don't overlook things at thrift store that maybe are dirty or the wrong color because almost everything can be cleaned and almost everything can be painted they could be spray painted gold are they your style are they i love that too traditionally you like them i especially love this i feel like this is my favorite thing that we found it's cool she's 6.99 she's a little scary but we'll wash her so here's a tip we like to lay out everything that we picked to see how it looks together and sort through anything that we may or may not need anymore and next we're going to head to the home decor store to pick up any extras that we couldn't end up thrifting just getting info for diys i can do with all these straws that end up in landfills strawberry art um just want to share a hot tip with you because we just came out of the actual home decor store and the total there was like 1 30. 1 15. in total there fire me and the total at the real home decor store was like 117 and our total thrift store was like 130. but we got almost double the amount of items one item really it's like so much better value to go to the thrift store yeah and then we went to the craft store which is our favorite place to get good faux plants it's important to know your fake flowers too for shelf styling like this looks like a bunch of real chopped flowers which goes in a vase or there's this which is more of a droopy variety which is useful for laying on the edge of a shelf they can hang down all right now we're back at adeline's and it's time to lay everything out and sort everything out and pull out the things that need to be diy yeah that's so good you got some books got some books covers are coming off of those and may be painted they might not need to be painted yeah that'd be awesome like this one beautiful all right so now we have all of our items ready to go let's get to the official story girls rules of styling a shelf all right first up is color scheme your room probably has a color scheme already so you might as well bring that into your shelving as well try to use layering whenever you can think about layering from the front to the back of the shelf as well as from the left to the right of the shelf and make sure to use medium sized objects to bridge the gap between really big things and really small things a rule that we quickly discovered was to let your colors breathe you don't have to have like every single color on every single shelf you can have some shelves that are a little breath of fresh air from your entire color palette so our next rule is don't worry about spacing everything perfectly evenly things actually tend to look better when you put them into groups on your shelves make sure that you're not afraid to get personal or show some of your hobbies you can show cameras or stationary and pens whatever you're into so here's a fun one we discovered groups of odd numbers tend to look a lot nicer so maybe try that out alright and remember that rule of having a variety of items if you need help getting started remember the three b's books botanicals and baskets and the very last rule is that you don't have to follow these rules styling shelves is all a matter of personal taste so if you like how it's looking go for it and have fun all right adeline's built-ins look amazing i'm really happy with how this turned out but i know not all of us have built-ins including me so this is how you can apply these rules to a solo shelf all right so first up we're definitely going to stick to a color scheme which is more like blues terracotta plants and greenery and of course white and some of these books aren't fitting the color scheme so i'm just going to flip them around and now they look neutral and only show off the ones that are fitting the vibe so here we're playing with height and layering by placing this plant on top of a box as well as layering from the front to back with this picture frame in the back don't be afraid to gather your items they don't have to be laid out perfectly they kind of want to be friends too so gather a couple of your items together it's going to make things look a little bit more natural we're leaving our journaling supplies out because don't forget to show your hobbies groups of odd numbers tend to look a little bit better so here we added a third item and remember if you're ever stuck go with the three b's books baskets and botanicals see it's easy as that and now the shelf looks styling and cute and effortless but lots of effort i hope you guys learned something from this video honestly i did yeah i totally did it's nice to see everything that we knew in our heads put down in an actual formula i think this is going to help us going forward as well definitely and if you guys want to check out adeline you definitely should she did like a little vlog process and just her videos are so bright and beautiful and yellow i love them send us your hashtag shelfies on instagram using stash like sorry girl squad because we want to see how you style your shelves because i'm always down to get more inspo mm-hmm all right thanks so much for watching this video guys if you liked it make sure that you give it a like and if you love it make sure you sub it and we will see you next time bye bye hi guys welcome to the end slate just wanted to give bridget a massive shout out for rocking our nervous laugh tea it looks so unbelievably good on you check the link in the description to find out where you can get your own nervous laugh teaokay yeah we can do that hi everyone my name is kelsey and my name is becky and we are the sorry girls and today we have a really exciting video that i think almost everyone can benefit from and that is help with styling our shelves the problem with shelves is that they're usually tall they're up on the wall they draw our eye upwards and we look at them and they're beautiful but we usually just kind of use them as a functional thing and not so much as like a styling point honestly up until now we've kind of left this to chance we just looked at a shelf thought it looked good maybe it's okay i've struggled with this in the past when i did my guest bedroom makeover at my parents house i just like didn't do a close-up on the shelves because i got so frustrated and i didn't know what to do and it wasn't looking just right but i was like i gotta finish this i'm just gonna move on and not show everybody what it looks like so we've taken all our knowledge of styling shelves over the years and put them together in some tips that are easy to follow we have a list of rules that everyone can do that's pretty much guaranteed to get yourselves looking good so in this episode we're going to show you how to style your shelves whether you have like a single little shelf or a giant built-in so you guys might remember adeline who we love so much we've done a couple style selected episodes with her and we actually helped style her shelving for christmas season a couple months ago so she actually reached out to us again sent us a text saying hey girls i need help turning these christmas shelves into summer shelves so alan don't worry we got you so knowing that adeline already had a lot of great pieces that already worked for her shelves we hit the thrift store to find some replacements for the items that were a little bit too wintry or christmassy okay so we're in the car with adeline we're on our way to the thrift store which is the first place we like to go it's the most affordable you can find really unique things there and then you're not spending like a million dollars on shelf but like seriously we buy like one little thing and each little thing is only like ten eight dollars for like a little plant a little this little that that adds up adds up it's always a really good idea to figure out what color scheme you want to go with first to help give your shopping some direction i like gold white maybe greenery and then maybe a little splash of yellow okay yeah we can do that this is such a huge thrift store got last car important oh my gosh that's it for when you're shopping if you have no idea where to start try picking up a variety of items look for books baskets bowls and botanicals we're hunting over white books this one it looks like it's not white but it is and then we don't have to paint them here's a tip don't overlook things at thrift store that maybe are dirty or the wrong color because almost everything can be cleaned and almost everything can be painted they could be spray painted gold are they your style are they i love that too traditionally you like them i especially love this i feel like this is my favorite thing that we found it's cool she's 6.99 she's a little scary but we'll wash her so here's a tip we like to lay out everything that we picked to see how it looks together and sort through anything that we may or may not need anymore and next we're going to head to the home decor store to pick up any extras that we couldn't end up thrifting just getting info for diys i can do with all these straws that end up in landfills strawberry art um just want to share a hot tip with you because we just came out of the actual home decor store and the total there was like 1 30. 1 15. in total there fire me and the total at the real home decor store was like 117 and our total thrift store was like 130. but we got almost double the amount of items one item really it's like so much better value to go to the thrift store yeah and then we went to the craft store which is our favorite place to get good faux plants it's important to know your fake flowers too for shelf styling like this looks like a bunch of real chopped flowers which goes in a vase or there's this which is more of a droopy variety which is useful for laying on the edge of a shelf they can hang down all right now we're back at adeline's and it's time to lay everything out and sort everything out and pull out the things that need to be diy yeah that's so good you got some books got some books covers are coming off of those and may be painted they might not need to be painted yeah that'd be awesome like this one beautiful all right so now we have all of our items ready to go let's get to the official story girls rules of styling a shelf all right first up is color scheme your room probably has a color scheme already so you might as well bring that into your shelving as well try to use layering whenever you can think about layering from the front to the back of the shelf as well as from the left to the right of the shelf and make sure to use medium sized objects to bridge the gap between really big things and really small things a rule that we quickly discovered was to let your colors breathe you don't have to have like every single color on every single shelf you can have some shelves that are a little breath of fresh air from your entire color palette so our next rule is don't worry about spacing everything perfectly evenly things actually tend to look better when you put them into groups on your shelves make sure that you're not afraid to get personal or show some of your hobbies you can show cameras or stationary and pens whatever you're into so here's a fun one we discovered groups of odd numbers tend to look a lot nicer so maybe try that out alright and remember that rule of having a variety of items if you need help getting started remember the three b's books botanicals and baskets and the very last rule is that you don't have to follow these rules styling shelves is all a matter of personal taste so if you like how it's looking go for it and have fun all right adeline's built-ins look amazing i'm really happy with how this turned out but i know not all of us have built-ins including me so this is how you can apply these rules to a solo shelf all right so first up we're definitely going to stick to a color scheme which is more like blues terracotta plants and greenery and of course white and some of these books aren't fitting the color scheme so i'm just going to flip them around and now they look neutral and only show off the ones that are fitting the vibe so here we're playing with height and layering by placing this plant on top of a box as well as layering from the front to back with this picture frame in the back don't be afraid to gather your items they don't have to be laid out perfectly they kind of want to be friends too so gather a couple of your items together it's going to make things look a little bit more natural we're leaving our journaling supplies out because don't forget to show your hobbies groups of odd numbers tend to look a little bit better so here we added a third item and remember if you're ever stuck go with the three b's books baskets and botanicals see it's easy as that and now the shelf looks styling and cute and effortless but lots of effort i hope you guys learned something from this video honestly i did yeah i totally did it's nice to see everything that we knew in our heads put down in an actual formula i think this is going to help us going forward as well definitely and if you guys want to check out adeline you definitely should she did like a little vlog process and just her videos are so bright and beautiful and yellow i love them send us your hashtag shelfies on instagram using stash like sorry girl squad because we want to see how you style your shelves because i'm always down to get more inspo mm-hmm all right thanks so much for watching this video guys if you liked it make sure that you give it a like and if you love it make sure you sub it and we will see you next time bye bye hi guys welcome to the end slate just wanted to give bridget a massive shout out for rocking our nervous laugh tea it looks so unbelievably good on you check the link in the description to find out where you can get your own nervous laugh tea\n"