How to Choose Shelving for Your Living Room

Adding shelving to your living room provides you with a space to display decorative accessories and books, and shelves can add a vertical element to your living room. The shelves, themselves, can also be very decorative. And it is easy to find bookshelves that are right for you because there are so many different designs.

Instructions:

1. Pick a place. It is best to have a location picked out for your shelves before you buy them. Having a place picked out will make choosing the size of shelves much easier.

2. Decide what you want to display. You don't have to know everything you are going to put on your shelves, but you should have some idea of what types of things you want to display. This will help you make a lot of other decisions about your shelves.

3. Decide whether you want free-standing shelves or wall-mounted shelves. Free-standing bookshelves tend to be much larger than wall-mounted shelves and can usually hold more weight. Wall shelves or floating shelves work great if you don't have a lot of empty floor space or you just have a few items you want to display.

4. Pick an appropriate size. The right size of shelving will depend on your preference and also what furniture will be near the shelves. Usually, the bigger a piece of furniture in a room, the more attention it will draw. So if you want to draw attention to what is on your shelves, buy larger shelves. If you want the shelves to act as a frame for your TV or fireplace, three-shelf bookcases on each side will work well.

5. Pick the materials. The most common materials shelves are made of are metal and wood. Both are sturdy enough to hold a lot of weight. The main difference between the materials is in terms of style. Wood shelves tend to give a little warmer feel to your living room. Metal shelves can be more modern, but some iron-frame shelves can fit in well in a country-style decor.