How to intentionally decorate your shelves (with items that hold meaning for you)

Ok cool, you’ve seen a lot of “awesome shelfies!”

But do you know how to decorate your shelves with intention?…

And how do you recreate the feeling of being put together on your own shelves, and even more important than that how can you use what you already have and love in a purposeful and beautiful way?..(saving you from wasting money & risking looking dated in the future)

Going out and buying a lot of trendy crap to arbitrarily fill up a bookcase does not an intentional and meaningful home make!

In this article, I’m going to show you WHY a good shelf looks put together and how to analyze what you have and love and how to put that together so that your home looks like YOURS and not a page out of a catalog!

I get it, staring at an empty bookcase…

Is an extremely daunting position to be in. It feels like that dreaded cursor blinking when your essay was due the next day! It’s really easy to let the fear overwhelm you and often people in this state in their own home will just look at a cute shelf and try and copy what they did with new stuff they had to buy just to FILL THE BOOKSHELF!

I want to free people from buying a bunch of crap just because people have been told that that’s what they “should” do!

~Fill ‘er up!…~

Once in my past life of working in another design studio as a designer, I remember my client purchasing a gorgeous vintage armoire. It was painted black with glass doors and patinaed wood shelves you could see through the glass! She LOVED the piece but since she had just moved she didn’t have anything to go in there and show off.

She gave me Carte-Blanche to shop and style the entire piece.

So I did, I picked out vintage pieces and books the “right color” and pretty little things and did the whole thing up. Honestly, it LOOKED beautiful and she loved it… but I remember thinking to myself this whole thing MEANS NOTHING to her...

I vowed never to do that for a client again, even if they begged me.

That’s why I’m here to show you how not to rush into filling up spaces with random stuff!

Meaning Over Looks - Express Who You Are.

Going against the grain, prioritizing meaning over how things look, takes some time and isn’t often taught, but it truly changes the way your home vignettes feel and expresses who you are as a person.

Focusing on items that have meaning for you will ask you to think longer and harder about what you bring into your home however it will also often save you money and save you from hating your entire trendy home 5 years down the road!

When staring at your empty shelves and choosing to go slow and start with what you already have and love, you cannot make a mistake. Mistakes happen when you either follow someone else’s ideas for you or feel that false sense of urgency like:

“I need to fill up these shelves or else it looks weird”.

Taking the basic design advice of, “put this here” and “remember the rule of thirds”, blah blah etc… separates you from your own creativity. When you have a birds-eye view of how you want to FEEL in your space, you can’t go wrong because you will use what your heart says matters in decorating your shelves!

show off what you collect… not what others say is “in”

Now let us get down to how you can use pieces you love to decorate your shelves!

Gather everything in your home that could be used on your shelves into one place.
Really look everywhere in your home. Start gathering the things that you really love into one spot. Maybe you really love something but it never really had its own home yet, put it in your pile! Don’t think too hard about this process.
It’s common for people to pick something up and try to have a plan for where that exact piece is going to go in their bookcase, they can’t figure it out and then they give up. Your job right now is not to figure out all of the shelves at once, it’s just to gather the things you like that may work into one spot!
Consider your own aesthetic.
Do not skip this part. Your personal taste of all of the things you love comprises your aesthetic. Your aesthetic may have elements of “design styles” (coastal, mid-century modern, farmhouse, etc.) however can NEVER be fully expressed by a design style. it’s individual like you are! It’s very important before starting any design endeavor that you have your own aesthetic clear in your mind. That way you can judge what you have gathered for your shelves from a place of power knowing what deserves to stay, what needs to go, and what may need to be added to reflect your personal taste!
•If you need help discovering your own aesthetic, check out my video on how to do that!
Gather inspiration.
When your aesthetic is established it’s soooo much easier to look at outside inspiration images (in this case, of styled shelves), and decide whether or not the images reflect what you truly love or not! Now that you know what your aesthetic is, look at inspiration images that speak to you.
Spend time understanding why you are attracted to this inspiration
Save these photos all in one place and think critically about how you want your personal shelf set up to feel and look. When you have some inspirational images that feel good to you and reflect your aesthetic, take some direction from how these images used specific items and scale to accomplish the look. For example, if you like their use of a specific color throughout, think about how you can accomplish that using your favorite color found in the items that you have collected so far?
Place your most important, loved/ largest pieces first onto the shelves.
Now back to your personal pile of loved items. Start with your largest and most precious items first. Do you need to adjust the shelves to fit these larger pieces? Stagger the pieces leaving lots of open space (to fill in more later) unless two items really work well together! Also, consider using the largest of items toward the bottom shelves if they really fill out the space.
Then place your most important, loved/ medium pieces next.
Now probably for the hardest part (no worries, you have this)! Most of your loved items will probably fit into the size category of somewhere in the middle. No problem, look at your average-sized pieces and start placing them on the shelves too where they would have prominence. Feel free to pair some of these pieces up with the larger items already placed.
Then place your most important, loved/ smallest pieces next.
Now, much like the two steps above go to your smaller pieces and place them where they feel good to you in the gaps you have left! Feel free to gather smaller similar items together if they are a collection to balance out a larger piece, or split a collection up so that you have a theme of continuity throughout. You are going for balance and feel here!
Now… you are probably still going to have some holes.
Let’s say your collection doesn’t quite fill up your shelves the way you wanted originally. Look back to your inspiration images. Are there items that are repeated that act as levels (books stacked for example), or maybe all of your loved pieces don’t have a lot of texture and you really love the baskets in that one inspiration photo, maybe you can see now that your favorite color green is represented well on one side of the shelves but you could use more of that color on the other side! Note down your overall impressions and think about what you may want to acquire out in the world intentionally to help illustrate your vision!
Or you may need to edit at this point!
Let’s say all of your shelves are now crammed with the things that you love, but it doesn’t look or feel right. Look back at your inspiration and take cues from the negative space that they used. Go back through your items in order of importance to you and edit ones that don’t feel at home here! Make sure you are using what you’ve learned from your aesthetic and your inspiration to make these decisions.
Contrary to popular design belief… NO NEED TO BUY THESE THINGS YET -
If you are in the “I still have holes that bug me” camp… just wait a minute. Who said that you needed every hole in your bookcase filled? Here’s a hint… probably someone who makes money off of the things that they tell you you need… just a thought.
Instead of running out and buying things I would recommend getting a plan together around what you plan to accomplish instead!
•if you would love a nice photoshopped plan of attack for your personal shelves I can help!
This way you can naturally add pieces that will work for your space and aesthetic as you live… and change.

11. Make a plan!

If you got this far and are thinking…

“But Catherine the empty spaces are really bothering me!”…

- totally fine I would still recommend making a plan to take shopping with you (with measurements).

- AND I would recommend you start with consignment or second-hand decor shops

(read my article on why here) -

This process helps you to lean on your own aesthetic when shopping instead of just going to a big box store since the pieces are coming from many different time periods!

It’s a lot easier to just go to rhymes with ~rate and apparel~ and buy what they have already curated to ensnare you and your money (no offense to that store)… but newsflash (and many people don’t get this…) you also run the risk of looking very dated as soon as the mainstream aesthetics change!

12. Do you still want the new stuff?

Now if you’ve gotten this far and are still thinking…

”But Catherine I really love that vase and picture frame and -insert another object here- from other words for… ~ceramics stable~!”

Go for it! Now that you have used what you had and love first, these real things become the focal point, and your new pieces become supporting characters on your shelves. Also… because you focused on what YOU love instead of what you are supposed to do, your aesthetic is now informing your decisions. When it comes to your home it should always be a priority!

Now that you’ve taken a moment to get clear, your shelves are going to look gorgeous (and much more importantly mean something to you)!

13. Now you have completed your shelves!

Don’t be afraid to take things out and add things as they come into your life!

Now for story time…

I once had a client who really didn’t like art that much. They didn’t see the point, many things didn’t speak to them and modern art was a completely foreign language to them (which is totally common)!

When designing their living room with them they suggested “maybe a gallery wall would look nice”… and I thought at that moment…

- yes perhaps for someone who loves art and/or creates it themselves but not for you guys! -

Now don’t treat your shelving or bookcases like this random gallery wall…

I tell this story because I don’t want you to treat your shelves as a place just to put things that don’t speak to you. I would literally rather you get rid of that bookshelf than fill your shelves with a bunch of stuff just so it “looks pretty”!

You can tell when someone only keeps objects in their home that they really love!

It expresses their authenticity.

Let me know if you guys found any of these tips helpful. I would also love to see how you implemented these tips in your own space or any stories about particular items that you really love and are excited to show off on your shelves!

Thank you so much for reading!

Here are some other articles I referenced above if you are looking for some more advice!:

The difference between a design style and your design aesthetic.

Why you should think about Vintage and Second-Hand items

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