How To Decorate Your Shelves for a Minimalist Look

Minimalism is a design and lifestyle concept that helps add modern flair to any interior design project. If you’re aiming to style your home with inspiration from minimalism, you might get stuck when it comes to organizing your storage shelves or bookshelves. How does one style objects like these, which usually contain a surplus of items, to reflect a minimalist look? Keep reading to discover how to decorate your shelves for a minimalist look. This is the perfect place to start when it comes to achieving a minimalist interior design at home.

What Is Minimalism?

While minimalism is a concept that originated post-World War II in the 1960s and 1970s, it remains a modern influence on interior design and visual art. Some even embrace minimalism as a lifestyle choice, in which the person’s goal is to only own what adds value and meaning to their life and get rid of clutter and items that are meaningless. In interior design, the goal of minimalism reflects these values. A minimalist interior design concept aims to create a simple and uncluttered space by utilizing only essential items and decorative pieces. You can see how this style of interior design pulls from the pillars of the minimalist lifestyle movement as well. Whether you live in an apartment, condo, home, or more, anyone can achieve a minimalist interior design with the right styling!

Styling Shelves for a Minimalist Look

If you’re accustomed to shelves that are usually cluttered with books, journals, decorations, and more, it can be difficult to envision a clean and minimalist design in your current space. However, simply follow the design tips below to inject the elements of a minimalist design into any shelving spaces around your home. Whether you’re styling your kitchen shelves, bookshelves in an office, storage shelves, and more, you can achieve a minimalist style by remembering these key tips.

Start With a Clean Slate

Start by emptying your bookshelves, floating shelves, or any other type of storage shelves you want to style. It can be difficult to work around objects you’ve already placed, and this could disrupt the style and balance you want to achieve. It will also be easier to proceed with the next steps when you have all your decorative items together in one place. You’ll also get a better picture of the overall composition and balance of your shelves as you build off a clean slate.

Only Choose Your Favorites

Once you’re able to get a better look at your shelves and your available space, start sorting your items. Take this opportunity to declutter the items that you no longer use or need and place them in a pile to donate. Because the point of minimalism is to hold onto only what’s most important to you, highlight your favorite items from your storage pile. These items are the ones that you should display most prominently on your shelves. Your most valuable items may vary for each room that you’re styling. For example, you may place your favorite books front and center in your library or office, while you may situate your favorite cooking utensils first on your kitchen shelves. Choose the items that are most important to you in that room and donate or toss the rest.

Stick to a Monochromatic Color Scheme

Now that you've decided on your favorite items, you’ll also need to know how to display them to reflect the minimalist look. Slimming down your decorations and supplies is only the first step. Another way to exemplify the minimalist style in your shelving choices is to follow a monochromatic color scheme. The best way to achieve this is to select your favorite items that are neutral-colored like black, white, and light colors. If your favorite books have bright-colored covers, consider removing the dust jackets to display the spine underneath, which often come in more neutral, muted colors. If you still need shelves for your home, make sure to choose these in a color to fit the monochromatic color scheme as well.

Group Similar Items

Minimalism is all about organization. To prevent your favorite items from looking cluttered across your shelves, try grouping similar items together. Grouping your items by their themes is a fantastic way to organize and keep your minimalist shelves practical as well as stylish. Books are one of the easiest items to organize by theme. You could keep educational books together, place a row of fiction books together, keep travel books in another spot, and so on.

Aim for Balance

As you start to place your items, don’t forget to consider the balance on each shelf and the overall bookshelf or other shelving unit. This not only refers to balance from a weight perspective but also a visual perspective. If you have too many items off to one side of your shelves, that end will look and feel “heavier” than the rest of the shelf, which could leave your whole shelving unit looking uneven. When you place an item on one side of your shelf, make sure to place a similarly-sized item on the opposite side to apply visual balance.

Don’t Forget Accent Pieces

Finally, don’t forget to top it all off with an accent piece. Designate your larger display items, such as larger photo frames or art prints, as accent pieces. Use these items to guide the viewer’s eye to a focal point along your display.

Do you have a better understanding of the concept of minimalism and how to achieve this style of interior design? We hope this guide on how to decorate your shelves for a minimalist look has helped you understand some of the key points of minimalism and how to channel them throughout your home. Using minimalism is a great way to bring a modern flair to your interior design.

As you follow this design journey, make sure you have the modern shelf brackets you need to support your decorative choices. Here at Right On Bracket, we carry all the support brackets you need for any shelving and design choices throughout your home.