They say your home is the museum of your life. I’m first to admit I can take that to a bit of an extreme. I’ve just always loved decorative objects. I find them on trips, the flea market, random boutiques. They always remind of the time and place where I found them. Thankfully, with all the styling we do around here these days, my accessories collection now comes in very handy! We decided to kill two birds with one stone with the Apartment 34 office redesign: store all our props and use them for our own decor!

office styling on apartment 34

When it comes to styling office shelves – especially when you’re working with a lot of accessories, the key is to keep things from getting totally overwhelming. In our case, there was editing involved {although you might not be able to tell!}. In order to avoid a hot mess, we styled the bookcases with a cohesive neutral color palette in mind: white, gray, creams and tans. A few pops of green, blue and bronze keep it from feeling too monotonous. Anything that didn’t work in our color scheme got stored out of sight.

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Another shelf styling rule of thumb is to create vignettes in threes. Each shelf got its own mini-threesome {or two!}. We grouped bowls, candles, vases and the like. Be sure to always vary the heights of your accessories to create balance!

Stacks of books {and my never ending collection of Vogues!} also helped break up horizontal lines and offer additional texture. There’s something about books that immediately warms up a space.

We also incorporated a variety of our glass objects {vases, carafes & even a selection of my favorite wine bottles} to keep the shelves from feeling visually heavy. Adding in plants {we picked a rubber leaf and snake plant} injected the entire space with life {duh} but I also love their different shapes and textures.

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We broke up the all the business we’ve got going on at our coworking desk by creating a distinct seating area on the opposite side of the room. It’s a lovely spot for group brainstorming sessions, magazine browsing and general decompression from screen time! I mixed a traditional sofa with more modern chairs and sweet white enamel side table. I used the art to inject the area with color.

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Finally, you may remember our office supply closet DIY from last year. Well, now we get to fully enjoy it because we removed the supply closet doors! I was pleasantly surprised how much it opened up the room. Now all we see is all that great bright white space, styled desk supplies {yes you can be picky about your office supplies and it DOES make a difference.}

Even with all our details proudly on display the office feels more open, more spacious and really inviting. By keeping our edit tight and the floor plan spread out we keep the room feeling overtaken by stuff. Now when we’re working on our next shoot everything we need is right at our fingertips!

 

original photography for apartment 34 by Aubrie Pick 

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47 Comments

  1. How lovely! It is all so cohesive and beautifully styled. I find my biggest problem is my collection of random objects. I don’t have a way to properly display them, so it just ends up looking cluttered. This is great inspiration! I am sure you are going to receive a ton of questions like this, but do you happen to know where those canvas bins on the shelves are from?

  2. i am in love with your golden ram! 🙂 sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo want it.

    1. Thanks Alexandra! it’s actually a pair of bookends I scored at Cavalier here in SF!

    1. Thank you so much for the kind comments Kevin! We’ve been quite pleased with how its turned out.

  3. Just beautiful! Thank you for the calming color tip! I often feel jarred nerves with too much stuff exposed on shelves, but you’ve managed to accomplish this in such a calming, enjoyable way. What a lovely place to work!

  4. This place is beautiful. It doesn`t seems so big but the layout, the style and the color palette are amazing: clean lines, but not cold, just a bit of warm and lovely details. The metalic chair is awesome! I wanna live there!

  5. Beautiful…would you share how you finished the shelving? It appears to be Ikea, but not just plain gold spray paint, love the texture.

  6. Love your bookshelves, can you share where you got the from?

    1. Hi Michele – they’re actually from HD Buttercup – a furniture store here in San Francisco but they also have an online shop!

  7. What are the dimensions of the gold shelves? The styling is beautiful!!

  8. Can you share where your couch is from? It’s just what I’ve been looking for!!

    1. Hi Emma – it’s actually an American Leather couch that I purchased at the SF-based furniture HD Buttercup but I know they’re carried lots of different places!

  9. Love the colours you’ve used throughout. Where did you get the lovely leather book belts/magazine belts from?

  10. That is the exact cowhide rug I’ve been looking for! Where is it from?

  11. I love the whole entire set up. every piece looks great together! Can you tell me where the metal chairs are from?

  12. Love the featured book shelves. Can you share where they are from?