Open shelving works in a bedroom when it holds a small number of considered items and closed storage takes everything else. The reliable ratio is roughly one part open to four parts concealed. Used that way, an open niche adds warmth and breaks up solid blocks of furniture. Used as the main storage, it turns a bedroom into a display of everyday clutter.<\/p>\n
With that principle in place, here are ten pieces where open shelving genuinely improves the furniture rather than complicating it.<\/p>\n
The most useful format beside a bed is a drawer above an open compartment. The drawer takes chargers, medication and small items. The niche takes the one or two books you are actually reading.<\/p>\n
Because the open section is small, it stays tidy by default. There is only room for what belongs there. Several designs in our modern bedside cabinets UK sale<\/a> range use this arrangement.<\/p>\n A wardrobe with a narrow open shelving column at one end breaks up what would otherwise be a solid wall of doors. It also gives you somewhere for folded knitwear, bags or a basket.<\/p>\n Keep this section to around a quarter of the total width. Any more and the wardrobe starts to look like shelving with doors attached.<\/p>\n A chest of drawers with one open bay at the top or side offers a place for a tray, a lamp base or a small stack of folded items, while the drawers below carry the volume.<\/p>\n It suits bedrooms where you want a surface at a height below the chest top, such as beside a chair or in a dressing corner.<\/p>\n In a large bedroom, or a studio where the sleeping area needs defining, an open shelving unit used as a divider separates zones without blocking light. Because you can see through it, the room still reads as one space.<\/p>\n Style it from both sides, since both will be on show. Options are available in our modern shelving units UK sale<\/a> range.<\/p>\n A headboard with a shallow shelf built into the top handles the role of a bedside table in rooms too narrow to fit one. A book, a glass and a lamp fit comfortably.<\/p>\n Keep the shelf shallow, around 12cm to 15cm, so items are within reach but the headboard does not project into the room.<\/p>\n A bookcase in a bedroom works when it holds books, folded textiles and a few boxes rather than a general collection of objects. Adding two or three fabric boxes to the lower shelves conceals the untidy items while keeping the upper shelves open.<\/p>\n This is the simplest way to get the open shelving look without the maintenance, and it suits rooms where you need capacity fast. Our modern bookcases UK sale<\/a> range covers narrow and wide formats.<\/p>\n A dressing table with an open shelf beneath the top gives you somewhere for a tray of daily items and lets a stool tuck in fully. The open shelf keeps the piece looking light in a corner that can otherwise become heavy.<\/p>\n Keep the shelf contents uniform, ideally in matching trays or boxes, since a dressing area collects small items quickly.<\/p>\n At the foot of the bed or beside a wardrobe, a bench with an open shoe rack beneath serves two purposes. You sit on it to put shoes on and the shoes live directly below.<\/p>\n It only looks good with a limited number of pairs on display, so use it for current footwear and keep the rest in the wardrobe base.<\/p>\n Leaning ladder shelving takes almost no floor depth at the base and narrows as it rises, which suits a small bedroom wall. It holds a plant, a few books and a folded throw without dominating.<\/p>\n Fix it to the wall for safety, particularly in a bedroom used by children.<\/p>\n A unit combining closed cupboard sections with a few open cubes gives you the flexibility to hide what needs hiding and show what deserves showing. In a bedroom this works well on the wall opposite the bed, where the arrangement is visible from where you sit up.<\/p>\n Look at the proportion of open to closed before choosing. Units that are mostly open will need constant tidying. Our display units UK sale<\/a> range includes several balanced formats.<\/p>\n Three rules keep it looking calm.<\/p>\n Leave roughly a third of each shelf empty. The negative space is what makes a styled shelf look deliberate rather than full.<\/p>\n Group items in odd numbers and vary the heights within each group. A tall object, a mid height object and a low object together read as an arrangement.<\/p>\n Limit the palette. Two or three tones across all the shelving, plus the natural tone of books or ceramics, is enough. A shelf displaying eight different colours reads as storage rather than styling.<\/p>\n Anything you use daily and anything with printed packaging. Cosmetics, medicines, paperwork, cables and laundry all belong behind a door or in a drawer.<\/p>\n Folded clothing works on open shelves only if it is a single category, such as jumpers, folded to a consistent size. Mixed clothing looks untidy within days.<\/p>\n Before adding open shelving, check that your closed storage is sufficient. If your wardrobe and drawers are already full, an open shelf will absorb the overflow and the room will look worse, not better.<\/p>\n Get the concealed capacity right first, then add open shelving as a finishing element. Coordinated storage groups make that easier to plan, and you can browse the full range in our modern bedroom furniture UK sale<\/a> collection at Furniture in Fashion<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every successful open shelving arrangement relies on a few closed containers within it. Fabric boxes, lidded baskets and timber trays hold the items that would otherwise spoil the look, while still reading as part of the display.<\/p>\n Choose them in one material and one tone rather than collecting them gradually. Three matching baskets look considered. Three different ones look like storage bought in a hurry.<\/p>\n Size them to the shelf rather than the contents, leaving a small gap at each side so they slide in and out easily. Boxes wedged tightly into a shelf stop being used within a month.<\/p>\n Shallow shelves stay tidier than deep ones, because there is no room for a second row of items to hide behind the first. For books and small objects, 20cm to 25cm of depth is enough.<\/p>\n Deeper shelves suit folded textiles and baskets, but they invite stacking, and stacked items are the fastest route to a shelf that looks neglected.<\/p>\n Where a unit has deep shelves you cannot change, use baskets to fill the depth and treat each basket as a single object on the shelf. It restores order without rebuilding anything.<\/p>\n Position affects how much maintenance a shelf demands. Shelving on the wall you face from the bed is on show constantly, so it needs to stay tidy. Shelving behind the door, or on the same wall as the bed, is seen far less and tolerates more practical use.<\/p>\n If you want the look without the upkeep, put the open shelving where you see it least and the closed storage where you look most. It sounds counterintuitive, but it produces a calmer room and the shelves still do their job.<\/p>\n Any tall or leaning shelving unit should be fixed to the wall, and this matters more in bedrooms than elsewhere because children and pets spend time in them unsupervised.<\/p>\n Check what your wall is made of before buying fixings. Plasterboard needs appropriate anchors rather than standard plugs, and a heavily loaded unit on the wrong fixing will pull away over time. Keep the heaviest items on the lowest shelves regardless of how the unit is secured.<\/p>\n In small amounts, yes. Keep it to around a fifth of your total storage and make sure closed storage handles clothing, paperwork and daily items.<\/p>\n Books, a plant, a folded throw, a few ceramics and framed pictures. Keep the number of items low and leave around a third of each shelf clear.<\/p>\n It can, because you see the wall behind it and the piece reads as lighter than a closed unit. That only holds if the shelves stay sparsely filled.<\/p>\n Not for hanging clothes. A bookcase with fabric boxes can supplement a wardrobe for folded items, but it will not replace hanging space.<\/p>\n Decide what belongs on each shelf and keep everything else off it. Adding two or three matching boxes gives overflow somewhere to go without breaking the look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Open shelving earns its place in a bedroom when it stays a small proportion of the storage and closed drawers and doors carry everything else. This piece rounds up ten furniture types where an open section genuinely improves the design, from bedside cabinets with a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":66005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[23,361,898,2275],"class_list":["post-66004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bedroom-furniture","tag-bedroom-furniture","tag-bedroom-storage","tag-interior-styling","tag-open-shelving"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66035,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66004\/revisions\/66035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furnitureinfashion.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Wardrobes With an Open End Section<\/h3>\n
3. Low Chests With an Open Top Bay<\/h3>\n
4. Open Shelving Room Dividers<\/h3>\n
5. Headboards With Integrated Shelves<\/h3>\n
6. Bookcases Used as Bedroom Storage<\/h3>\n
7. Dressing Tables With Open Under Shelves<\/h3>\n
8. Shoe Benches With Open Racks<\/h3>\n
9. Ladder Shelving Against a Spare Wall<\/h3>\n
10. Display Units With Mixed Open and Closed Storage<\/h3>\n
How to Style Open Shelving in a Bedroom<\/h3>\n
What Not to Put on Open Shelves<\/h3>\n
Balancing Open Shelving With Closed Storage<\/h3>\n
Baskets and Boxes: The Quiet Workhorses<\/h3>\n
Depth Matters More Than Width<\/h3>\n
Where Open Shelving Works Best in the Room<\/h3>\n
Safety and Fixings<\/h3>\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h3>\n
Is open shelving practical in a bedroom?<\/h3>\n
What should I put on bedroom open shelves?<\/h3>\n
Does open shelving make a small bedroom look bigger?<\/h3>\n
Can I use a bookcase instead of a wardrobe?<\/h3>\n
How do I keep open shelves tidy?<\/h3>\n