How to Make Shelves a Focal Point

 
There’s no such thing as too much storage! There are two distinct types of storage – Storage Display and Discreet Storage. Today’s focus is on opportunities for focal storage display. Shelves offer a unique opportunity to express your own style with little if any impact to precious square footage.

If you own a business, square footage is prime real estate whether in a service or retail capacity. An effective business knows how much money it makes per square foot.

 Residential square footage is prime real estate within the home. Minimizing clutter and choosing furnishings in correct scale to your space helps create clean and uncluttered flow from room to room. Keeping this in mind, shelves occupy only area built up the walls, and as a natural consequence, function to draw the eye up. Not much prime real estate is wasted since hopefully, there’s little traffic flow on your walls.

Here are some ways to combine storage and impact.

 

If you have glass fronted storage cabinets in a kitchen, commuicate colors in a 1 – 2 punch. 1 – Choose iems for display that mirror the exterior color of your cabinets and 2 – draw on a color prominent in the back splash to paint the cabinet interiors.
Table top accessories stored in glass front  kitchen cabinetry allows the table story to communicate back and forth at all times, either with your eat-in kitchen zone, or returned to visible storage. This creates color flow and unity between the kitchen and dining spaces.

Great Shelves by Elizabeth Martin

 Create depth and interest in a monochromatic color scheme by painting shelf interiors rich color. Blues and blue-greens create the illusion of ceiling height or depth, on walls – it actually feels like the wall has been punched out an additional foot.

The backs of the shelves are painted in the deep chocolate color of the dark floors. There is no better way to achieve the illusion of height than by running the floor color up the wall. Here the deep brown is relieved by bright crisp white that broadcasts the shapes, because they are uninterrupted and uninhibited by the introduction of color.

This is a great way to get a high-end look for less $$$.

Mirrors by default double the perception of any space they occupy, creating sparkle and the illusion of space. There is no bigger statement than mirrored shelf in sets…

 
…with the possible exception of Kitchenmaid’s mirror backed cabinetry with circular moldings! These Kitchenmaid cabinets are the dream kitchen’s dream, made even better with the magic of mirror backing in combination with repeating circles!
 

A transient book shelf creating color and reinforcing the illusion of ceiling height

Shelves that are not built-in are excellent opportunities for renters. This particular use of a transient book shelf accomplishes 3 separate design goals:

1 . It introduces a bright pop of color in a largely monochromatic space.
2. It conveys the illusion of raising the ceiling height by use of the white enjoying a hand-holding relationship with the white chair, white picture matte and antlers that draw the eye up to the white candles, and finally to the cream-colored ceiling  in sharp relief to deep chocolate walls (don’t try this at home in a poorly lit room!).
3. While the trunk looks patently decorative, it’s a great place to stash space-sucking paper backs, magazines and other clutter – speaking of which, next time we’ll continue prep for spring cleaning with  ideas to combine style with discreet storage in an economy of space.
 
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