Our Bookshelf Styling Double Date

This post is dedicated to Sam and Brad: for your patience and understanding. 

Two weeks ago I posted about the work we’ve done in our front hallway, including turning our pantry into colorful open shelving:

I’m guessing that when you looked at it, your first thought was “wow, that’s a really well-styled bookshelf!” Why thank you! But I can’t claim full credit for it, because the reality is that Naomi and I had a little bookshelf-styling party. Yes, we do things like that. You see, when I finished painting the back of the bookshelves and started loading things into them, I quickly decided I needed some assistance. From someone other than Sam. So I texted Naomi:

“I need help styling my bookshelf. I am not good at these things….”

She wrote back immediately: “THAT SOUNDS LIKE FUN.”

Fortunately we had a couples game night planned for the coming weekend, so naturally we explained to The Guys that we would be starting our evening early so that first Naomi and I could spend some time with our Bookshelf Styling Extravaganza while the natural light was still good (because obviously we needed to photograph our work, and the sun sets before 5 p.m. these days in Boston). Oh, and first Naomi went on a thrift store shopping spree and bought a bunch of awesome things to use in our styling, because she’s the best like that.

While Sam and Brad entertained themselves in the living room, Naomi and I ran around the house grabbing books and accessories. Things got a little crazy — this is only about a quarter of what we collected:

We thought it would be fun to create four different styles, and here’s what we cooked up over the course of about an hour:

Casual: This is what I threw on the shelves in advance of Naomi coming, so as not to look like a total decorating amateur. We liked that it looked effortless and not overly-styled.  I got the look by allowing my books to lean or not be in neat stacks.  But it still look unified because I used a a lot of my favorite color, turquoise, and kept the palette soft.

Collected: For a more formal, polished look, we used a lot of silver, white, and blue, including two china pieces that Naomi found in her thrifting adventures, silver candlesticks that my mother gave as a wedding gift, and a silver tray to back of one of the top shelves.  We kept the number of items to a minimum, and let the negative space be part of the look.

Bold: For this one, we went for high-contrast, and grabbed a bunch of colorful accessories and books, using a lot of orange, red, and yellow.  The idea was to really make the strong teal color of the bookshelves sing.

Personal: For the last look, which is the one we left up for the foreseeable future, we made sure to work in a lot of my favorite things — like a teapot and silver candlesticks my mother gave us, two photos of Sam and me getting engaged (his brother was there to snap pictures), colorful stuffed toys and metal birds from my mother-in-law, a weaving by Sam’s grandmother, and one of the china pieces Naomi found while thrifting (a new addition to the collection of meaningful items).  We went for a more eclectic look somewhere between our “collected” and “bold” attempts, with some bright colors standing out against a base of white.

We are by no means stylists.  Wait, let’s bold that: not stylists.  But we tried to do a few simple things in each look to make it all come together:

• We used something “weighty” on each shelf, whether it was a stack or row of books, or a big item like a canister or large teapot.
• We added something tall to each shelf, so we were using all of the space.
• When using color (or a particular material, like silver), we made sure it was  distributed across the shelves, and not grouped all in one place.
• We “layered” at least a couple of the shelves in each look by leaning a picture against the back wall behind other items.

So that’s the story of how we kicked off our couples game night. Casual, collected, bold, and personal — which one do you like best?

Update: be sure to check out Phase II of the hallway makeover, painting the stairwell and adding some pizazz to the stair risers with fabric, and Phase III, all the finishing touches (including new light fixtures, art, and painting the front door)!

 

(Sharing at A Bowl Full of Lemons, Whimsy Wednesday, The 36th Avenue, Tip Junkie, Sunday Showcase, DIY Showoff, Saturday Sharefest, and AKA Design)