Styling long shelves

Long shelves can be a bit tricky to style, and it’s easy for them to look cluttered and lack cohesiveness.

The shelves in our dining room were a bit overwhelming to me at first, and I kept them super bone bare to avoid them looking messy. I love being able to display my favorite things, and so I started using the “grid” method when styling and it has helped SO much! Now I’m able to display all of my beautiful things, while still remaining intentional and cohesive.

Here is what I mean. The trick with long shelves is that they are, well, LONG. Break your shelves into grids, 3 across and one grid for every shelf. Because this is in our dining room I kept the bottom middle open for extra serving space when entertaining.

Then, in each grid repeat materials and colors. For me, this is white earthenware, glass and natural wood. Every grid doesn’t have to have every color or material, but you’ll see in the picture above that my white earthenware is on either side to create symmetry (I wouldn’t have them directly above each other as one side of the shelves would be too heavy with white.

If you’re decorating bookshelves, maybe you start with books and add a small grouping in each grid, and then a decorative element in the same material or color in 2 or 3 of your grids.

Next, I added in some books for height, but you’ll see that they’re in the same tone as my natural wood so the look flows.