Decorating shelves with your own hands

Shelves and racks for a room are a great way to not only decorate any room, but also add a little (or a lot) of space for small items that should always be at hand. Today you can find just an insane amount of shelf options for every taste, wallet and interior.

And many craftsmen even offer exclusive shelving that cannot be found anywhere else. With such an original thing, you can easily change the appearance of the room, giving it brightness, beauty and freshness.

Varieties of shelves

Today, the bulk of shelves and racks are divided according to several criteria:

1. By type (hanging, wall, floor)
2. Shape (rectangular, square, etc.)
3. By design (open or closed)
4. By material (wood, plastic, metal, other)

Making a decision on each of the characteristics depends on the required functionality of the shelf or rack, the style and color of the room. A shelf or rack should contain all the necessary things that you may always need.

It would also be a good option for such a shelf, on which, in addition to useful things, you can place some decorations such as photographs, figurines, various souvenirs and others.

By sight

By type - the first criterion from the above list - shelves are divided into three large categories:

1. Hanging shelves
2. Wall shelves
3. Floor shelves

Hanging shelves are usually located on brackets, pipes, or special holders that are attached to a wall or other base. They are not very large, since the attachment to the brackets is not very reliable.

Wall shelves are the most common type of such furniture. They are, as the name suggests, attached to the wall. Such a model is considered a fairly reliable option, since the wall mount provides sufficient strength.

Floor shelves are more like cabinets or shelves due to their rather large dimensions. Usually, in addition to being installed on the floor, they are also additionally fixed with screws or other devices to the wall for greater stability.

By form

Now in construction and interior stores there is an insane variety of shapes for shelves and racks. Today, you can find on sale both standard-shaped shelves (square, rectangular, flat (consisting of one crossbar)) and more rounded shelves (oval, round, ellipse).

A separate item is shelves and racks of unusual shapes such as rhombuses, "honeycombs", triangles and others. The shape of the shelves should be chosen based on what exactly will fit in a particular room, and how many things need to be placed on them. The more things have to take their place on the shelf, the more "comfortable" shape and depth it should have.

Design

The design of the shelves is an important characteristic when choosing furniture for a room.They usually fall into two broad categories:

1. Open
2. Closed

Open shelves - everything is simple here. They are called "open" for the absence of any doors or partitions in the front, which provides constant access to the contents of the shelves for anyone who can reach them. Open shelves look pretty nice and are very functional. But they have one significant drawback - a pet (for example, a cat) can climb into an open shelf and throw things on the floor.

You can, of course, choose a closed shelf - it has doors, thanks to which the things lying there will be protected not only from the intrusion of a pet, but also from prying eyes (for example, guests will not know what is behind the shelf door if they do not try to climb there specifically ). True, such a model can make the appearance of a room heavier due to its similarity to a box.

By material

Usually, the following materials are used for the manufacture of shelves:

1. Laminated chipboard sheets.
2. Laminated fiberboard sheets.
3. Wood.
4. Stainless steel.
5. Glass.
6. Plastic.

Laminated sheets (chipboard and fiberboard) and plastic are the cheapest materials, and therefore are often used to create shelves in a low price category. They can be used in bedrooms, living rooms, halls or in the kitchen. Plastic shelves are often used in the bathroom.

Wood and glass are more interesting materials that cost a little more than the previous ones. Wooden shelves are usually used in rooms where there are already elements of furniture made of wood to create a certain harmony, balance of color and texture.

These shelves are commonly used in bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens. The glass shelf can be placed in the bathroom. A stainless steel shelf is an option for a kitchen or bathroom due to its rather neutral appearance. It is better to choose another option for the rooms.

How to place the shelf correctly

It is worth thinking about how to correctly place the shelves on the wall in the room when choosing the shelves themselves. If this is a composition that forms an almost full-fledged rack, you need to place the shelves in accordance with the idea - one above the other, at a certain distance from the composition, or fasten one shelf to another, so that together they look like a small cabinet attached to the wall.

Often, with the help of shelves, walls are decorated in a special way, giving the room a more interesting and original appearance. In this case, the arrangement of the shelves should be a full-fledged drawing that will catch the eye when entering the room.

How to make a shelf decor

Now you can find a huge amount of tools for decorating shelves in any room, so the problem of "how to decorate a shelf in a room" is easily solved. The simplest decor option, of course, is a ribbon with light bulbs, similar to the one that is hung on a Christmas tree (by the way, you can hang this one too, it looks very nice). The most popular among buyers are white, yellow and pink ribbons with bulbs.

The second inexpensive way to decorate a shelf (for example, with books) is to install special insert inserts for the shelves.Usually they look like a piece of some street in miniature and look very good among the books, from where the depicted place was taken.
The third way (very expensive now) is to buy several books of the same series - the same spines look very interesting on the shelf and give the whole composition a kind of "image integrity".

In the living room

What shelf do you need for the living room? To understand this, you first need to decide what to put on the shelf in the living room? If there are quite a few things that could be placed there, then a huge rack is not needed at all, a small shelf is enough. For books and other important things that I would like to show "face", it is better to pick up several open beautiful shelves or a small rack, suitable for the design of the living room.

If there are a lot of things, you should give preference to a large rack, which has enough space for books, movies, a TV, and even a couple of cute figurines that will decorate the room.

In the hall

The shelf in the hallway is, first of all, a functional thing. Usually, a wall or hanging shelf in the hallway is used to store small things that you need to use or take with you before leaving the house - an antiseptic, sunglasses, gloves, a mask, and more. Usually, along with such a shelf, a mirror is attached to the wall.

Floor shelves in the hallway usually play the role of a shoe rack - these are deep drawers (usually closed), in which all shoes suitable for a certain season are kept in the public domain. The floor shelf should contain both three pairs of sneakers and sneakers, as well as winter boots - in a word, all the necessary shoes so that you can safely go out.

On the kitchen

The shelf in the kitchen should also be functional in the first place. Usually, utensils, various culinary utensils and products are stored on kitchen shelves - cereals, spices, everything that can be stored at room temperature (not in the refrigerator or in the freezer).

Therefore, kitchen shelves should be spacious (perhaps even more spacious than the floor shelves in the hallway), securely fastened and conveniently placed so that the owners of the apartment can quickly get everything they need and start cooking.

In the bathroom

Quite a lot of things are put on the shelf in the bathroom, and therefore it must be deep enough, and its fasteners must be strong enough to withstand the weight of what will lie or stand there. Usually on the shelves in the bathroom there are various cosmetics and various things that are used in the shower - pumice stones, nail files, washcloths, and so on.

For all these things, it is necessary to organize enough free space so that in which case one thing does not catch on to another when falling and does not drag the entire contents of the shelf with it to the floor.

In the bedroom

The shelf in the bedroom is a place where there are usually lovely knick-knacks, photographs and all sorts of souvenirs. For such purposes, it is better to hang a small open shelf (hanging or wall) in the room.

Near the bed itself, you can make another shelf on which a book, phone, glasses, hand cream and other useful things will lie. The shelf should not be too bulky, it is better to make the crossbars thinner, and choose plastic from the materials, this option will look good, but it will not overload the interior of the room.

In the children's room

The shelf in the nursery should definitely be large - just for all the things that kids need every day.Usually, a roomy rack is placed in the nursery to provide more space on which to place all useful things, from toys and all kinds of materials for drawing / modeling / other things to notebooks and textbooks (for primary school students).

A shelf or rack of such a model will become a convenient addition and decoration for a room and a useful purchase that will definitely come in handy in everyday life.

Extraordinary ideas

Original ideas for room shelves are now quite common. The unusual composition often lies in the shape of the shelves - very often people try to decorate their home using the following forms:

1. Honeycomb
2. Triangles
3. Rhombuses
4. Circles, ovals
5. Diamond shape
6. "Contour", when a picture is formed from the crossbeams
7. Maze
8. Console shelves

Usually, the models of such shelves are made by hand, because ordering them in specialized workshops is very expensive and there is a risk of overpaying too much for the work, when the material will cost 15 percent of the total cost, and the work - 85 percent.

Shelving decoration

Shelving design is no less important work than buying and installing it.

To make your room even more beautiful, you can arrange a rack standing against the wall in a special way - for example, arrange things on all its shelves in a certain sequence of colors (the same combination should be repeated on all shelves) or choose several colors and put them on the shelves things of only these colors.

You can also arrange things on the shelves in a special way so that they form geometric shapes, or, for example, so that they stand in the same order (for example, a book-notebook-candle). Then the room will acquire new colors and become more comfortable.

In general, shelves and racks are useful pieces of furniture that can be used not only as functional items, but also as decoration of a room.

Video: how to decorate a shelf

Shelves in the interior in the photo