Open. Open EVERYTHING! That’s one of the biggest design trends in the last few years that is different from years past where everything had it’s own confined space. Open shelving is one of the easy ways to modernize your home and open things up.
Some people go to the extreme of even having no cabinets in their kitchen and just have their serve ware on open shelving. We aren’t that extreme, but we’ve actually done five types of DIY open shelving that you can do too to open up your home!
I hope that this post can show you that open shelving is not only beautiful, but practical. It is a great way to have things right at your finger tips and to never forget where something is stored.
Five Types of DIY Open Shelving Ideas
- Floating Shelves – open shelving doesn’t always have to show the braces that you use to support the shelves. Try making floating shelves that hide the support inside the box that is the floating shelf.
These shelves are particularly great in a nook-like space, like where this toilet is. They look great “floating” from wall to wall!
- Rope Shelves – install dock cleats into your wall and hang shelves supported by rope from the cleats. These shelves are entirely open and hang beautifully for a coastal vibe.
These shelves are great in a space where you purely want something decorative. They are simple and geometric in design but still manage to make a statement.
- Island Cabinet – build a box or transform a cabinet into open shelving and add it on to the end of your kitchen island. Now you have quick access to your essential cookbooks!
Kitchen cabinets are not typically considered open storage, but remove a door and now you have open shelves! You might not want to do that with all of your cabinets, but one strategically placed cabinet without a door can be beautiful!
- Open Medicine Cabinet – tear out that ugly plastic mirror medicine cabinet and build a custom open shelving insert to pop in the hole in your bathroom wall that will add a cool spot for decor.
This is a great example of taking something truly hideous and making it into something beautiful. By framing out the old medicine cabinet, your items take on the look of a piece of art!
This is in our master bathroom, where no one goes except us, but it could work really well for displaying toiletries for guests in a guest bathroom, too!
- Open Kitchen Shelving – these shelves are DIY install, but purchased ready to install. We loved these quarter round shelves to go off the end of our cabinets in our kitchen.
Adding open shelving to the end of a kitchen cabinet gives you the look and feel of open shelving while still maintaining the functionality of closed cabinets. Win-win!
Adding one of these five types of DIY open shelving to your space will easily and instantly make your room feel lighter, brighter and bigger and wishing you had done it sooner.
Looking for other shelving ideas?
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Hey there, I’m Sean, the woodworking enthusiast and builder behind CharlestonCrafted.com! Since 2012, I’ve been sharing the magic of turning raw materials into beautiful creations. I love teaching others the art and satisfaction of woodworking and DIY. I try to inspire fellow crafters to make something extraordinary out of nothing at all.