Floating Shelf Styling Tips And Tricks

Floating Shelf Styling Tips And Tricks

My very favorite part of any room makeover is the styling phase. For one, it means that the project is almost finished (hooray!), but it’s also an opportunity for me to put all of those personal finishing touches in place. I generally save all of our really special room accents for the styling phase—things like framed photos, things we’ve brought back with us from our travels, family heirlooms, pieces of handmade art, etc.—so it’s especially gratifying to layer these pieces into any room makeover I happen to be working on. Keep scrolling for all of my best tips and tricks for styling your own shelves (specifically floating shelves), including my formula for a fool-proof design that works every time.

Floating Shelf Styling Tips And Tricks

The tricky thing about floating shelves in comparison to, say, full surround built-in shelves or cabinets that have sides to them is that you have to make sure to incorporate bookends. Floating shelves have only a back to them (i.e. the wall itself), so upright books have nothing to lean against on either side. I don’t really love the look of bulky bookends, so I tend to use other decorative accents to hold my books in place. I use heavy ceramic vases, potted plants, or even stacks of horizontally placed books to steady my upright hardbacks and novels. I also really like using these clear bookends because you can slip them invisibly underneath the last few books in the row, and you’d never really know there was a bookend there.

Floating Shelf Styling Tips And Tricks

Wanna know my foolproof formula for good floating shelf styling? It’s so easy, and I use this process for each and every shelf or tabletop that I style in our home, whether it’s a mod floating shelf, or not! Here’s what I do: I vary object heights (I try not to put equally sized objects right next to each other), group things in odd numbers (usually one or three, although there are exceptions, of course), include a plant, and fill open awkward spaces with leaning art. I was just about to say that it really is that simple, but maybe that sequence sounds overwhelming! If it does, just take it one single step at a time.

For example, if you’re working on styling two stacked floating shelves, like the ones you see pictured below in our kitchen, start with just one type of thing—maybe books. You can see how I placed one horizontal stack of books to the right of the bottom shelf, and another stack toward the left on the top shelf. Then, it felt natural to pop a little something on top of the books to give those groupings some extra height. From there, I just layered things in where it felt empty. It really does help to start with just one type of item (like books), and then build on your styling from there. This helps the process feel less daunting, and I think you’ll find that you move through things intuitively (not to mention with more confidence!) once you get that first grouping in place.

It’s worth mentioning that I do my best to use at least a few functional items in my styling so that it’s not purely decorative. A recipe card box that we use often when baking went on one book stack, and my everyday watering can went on top of the other books stack. Oh, and did you notice that both book stacks are done in groupings of three? There’s just something very organic looking about odd-numbered groupings.

Floating Shelf Styling Tips And Tricks

One thing about floating shelves that I don’t actually love is how stark and straight they are. There’s generally nothing soft about these flat thin shelves, and I find myself wishing I could add some architectural detail to make them a little less harsh visually. One of my favorite ways to add organic appeal to floating shelves is with plants that have vining leaves. Imagine how those floating shelves in the photo below would look if I didn’t have that vining plant on the bottom shelf. They would look nice, but also pretty rigid. That one long trailing vine that breaks the plane of the bottom shelf to hang down in front of the wall gives your eye something to look at and follow, helping with the visual flow and makes the overall shelf styling look more relaxed and lived in.

Floating Shelf Styling Tips And Tricks

If this topic is of interest to you, I wanted to remind you that I actually focused an entire chapter of my eBook on how to style your home! There are tons of extra tidbits in that section of my book, including my 4-step process, advice for learning to accept the mistakes that inevitably happen during the process (I never get it right on the first try!), how I use my phone camera to perfect the last details, ways to be more sustainable with your styling, and even how to work around practical-but-ugly stuff (think: cords, thermostats, etc.). Click here to purchase a digital copy of “Your DIY Guide To Home Decorating,” and make sure you use the discount code “DGDTEAM” for 10% off! Happy styling, my friends.

Your DIY Guide To Home Decorating eBook*I earn a small percentage from purchases made using the affiliate links above. Affiliate links are not sponsored. Rest assured that I never recommend products we wouldn’t use or don’t already love ourselves.

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Updated Mid-Century Dining Room Tour

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

*This post was made possible by the generous support of Article, and features gifted product for testing purposes. All opinions are my own.

Remember when I teased an update for our dining room late last month? Well, I’m back with the reveal today, and I’m so excited to share all of the details! If you read the introduction post here, then you know we absolutely adored our previous vintage dining set. The lines were so quintessentially mid-century (our favorite era of design), and we loved that we were making good use of a beautiful secondhand set. The one big problem? It was just too oversized for our small dining room. See it pictured below.

New Art Theme For The Dining Room | dreamgreendiy.com + @artfullywalls #ad #gifted

New Art Theme For The Dining Room | dreamgreendiy.com + @artfullywalls #ad #gifted

Truth be told, the oversized, ultra-tall scale of the old furniture probably would have worked if our dining room was tucked off to the side of our home’s layout with just one door in and out. Unfortunately for us and our current floor plan, the main path to get to our bedrooms and bathrooms on the far side of the house is through one door that leads into the dining room and out another dining room door. In other words, we walked through the dining room dozens and dozens of times a day, which meant that we were constantly dodging the high backs of our old mid-century dining chairs. Something needed to change.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

Catch up here if you missed my mood board and want more explanation for this dining room update, but the main goal was to find a new dining set with chairs that had much lower backs on them to make for easier flow to the back bedrooms. I was also anxious to find something in a much lighter wood tone, too. The old vintage set was stained a rich, deep shade of brown, which, I think made the small dining room look even smaller than it really is. I wanted to replace the set with something in a light oak color that matched all of the framed art that we have in the room, and I was also open to looking for a glass table that would all but disappear into the room, helping to make it look lighter and more spacious overall.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTableRetro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTableRetro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

The answer to all of these problems? The Emmer Oak Wood & Glass Dining Table and a set of four Alta Oak Wood Dining Armchairs, both from Article. I’ve been a regular Article shopper for years and years now, and have never been disappointed (click back here and scroll to the end of the post for links to all of my Article reviews from the past in case you’re curious). I know it’s not easy to shop for furniture online without being able to see, touch, and sit in the items in person, but Article furniture is really solidly built, and I love making good use of the reviews section of their website, too. Those help me shop so much more confidently, which is why I always make sure to write super thorough reviews for you guys here. I want you to go into your own Article ordering process without any doubts.

A quick aside about ordering from Article—I’ve always had a pleasant experience! There are several tiers that you can opt in on, like curbside delivery or white glove service. We went with the latter this time, and it was well worth the upgrade. Our delivery team unboxed the chairs and table, hauled away the trash to recycle, and even assembled the table for us. I didn’t have to do anything but sit back and offer glasses of water to the guys as needed. I was relived to see that the chairs didn’t require any assembly so that our delivery team only had to assemble the table base and attach the glass tabletop. The chairs are good to go straight out of the box. There are so many Article products that come that way, which I appreciate from a consumer standpoint, but I also believe that fully pre-assembled furniture equals a higher quality product in the end.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

Anyway, we absolutely love our new Emmer table and Alta chairs. The glass table is actually almost the same dimensions as our old vintage table, but the light wood frame, gently rounded edges, and glass tabletop all combine to give this table a weightless look that feels much better suited for the room. And our new Alta chairs are the perfect height. No more dodging them on the way to the bedrooms and bathrooms!

Functionally, the new set is so much more practical for us (and comfortable to eat at, too, I should mention), but I’m also just so excited about the way the room actually looks now. The light oak table and chair frames are a nearly perfect match to the frames in our art collection, and the light ivory upholstery on the chairs also nicely complements our painted kitchen cabinets in the room just off this dining space. This update makes the entire left half of our house look so much more cohesive and intentional. That was actually a happy surprise—I didn’t plan it.

Since I know some of you will be wondering, I wanted to address the upkeep of having a glass table. You do have to keep in mind that glass needs to be wiped down pretty much every day to get rid of smudges, but we used to wipe our old wood table after dinner ever night anyway, so this hasn’t required a change in our routine. We bought a streak-free glass cleaner, and keep that plus a microfiber towel in the dining room hutch that you see there in the back of the room. We reuse the towel throughout the week, and refresh it in the washing machine every weekend. It also helps that we use placemats during every meal. We keep those tucked in the hutch drawers and pull them out to set our plates/bowls on at every meal to keep the table as clean as possible. All in all, the upkeep hasn’t been troublesome at all.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTableRetro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

What do you think of the new look? Like I said, we loved our old vintage furniture so much, but sometimes a room just needs a modern set to function best for everyday lives. We had so many specific needs on our wish list, and this new dining set checks all the boxes. It feels good to finally be done with this room. Let me know your thoughts about the new design in the comments, and also feel free to ask any questions about the set in case you need more information on comfort and the ordering process. I’m an open book, as always.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

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