How To Incorporate Open Shelving Without Sacrificing A Clutter-Free Look

There's no doubt that open shelving can provide any room of the home with a stunning appearance. The design can be particularly useful in the kitchen where it's sometimes necessary to grab ingredients, utensils, and cookware quickly and easily without fumbling around and rifling through deep cabinets. However, despite the functional benefits of various open shelving kitchen ideas, it can be difficult to make the style look as stunning and aesthetically pleasing as you would like.

It's important to keep an eye on clutter when you have open shelving and to know a few tricks and strategies for keeping it looking great. To that end, keep the appearance of the shelves in mind and aim not to overfill them. Leave some space between items and limit the total number of kitchenware and items you store on the shelves. Remove everything from the shelves to create a clean slate and then re-add items to your shelves one at a time, sticking to only those that you use on a regular basis. Try to maintain a sense of symmetry and balance and keep a similar number of items on each shelf, rather than having large groups of items on some shelves with others nearly empty.

While creating a sense of balance and leaving some empty space between items Is a great step toward preventing clutter, there are other best practices that can help and a few different ways to arrange items for a better look. To start with, create groups of items based on type and use. While it may seem obvious, remember that your shelves will look more organized if you tend to bring similar items together rather than keeping them scattered throughout your many open shelves. However, mixing bulky items and small pieces can still work. Add some back and forth between small and large items to create visual contrast and to achieve greater levels of balance. 

When storing items on open shelves, consider the flow within a single shelf as well as how your open shelving looks as a whole. Don't be afraid to try things out or to arrange and rearrange as needed. With some experimentation, you're likely to find something that looks perfect to you. Also, take cleaning seriously. You should dust and clean on a regular basis to ensure that dust doesn't build up too much. Part of the reason why open shelves can start looking uncluttered is not because of the items you're storing, but simply because the shelves can get dirty as time goes on.

The overall aesthetic and style of your open kitchen shelves may also affect how cluttered or uncluttered you perceive it to be. It's well worth thinking carefully about the overall look of your open shelves as well as the colors, shapes, and textures within them. Be sure to take the shelves, the wallpaper, the items you're storing, and your overall kitchen design into consideration and determine how each element meshes with the others. 

It's a great idea to choose a color scheme for your shelves. Creating a contrast can help your dishes pop out from the shelves in a stunning way, such as pairing neutrals with splashes of color. When implementing kitchen color ideas, you may want to add wallpaper that's distinct from the shelving to make a bold statement or place containers on the shelves to add extra splashes of color. 

In addition to considering the colors used in your open shelving, you may also want to add other decor to make things pop even more. You may want to add plants, vases, art, cookbooks, and more. Paying attention to the overall look of your open shelving and using it together with space and balance can allow you to create open shelves that look clean and uncluttered.