#HTE

Using Shelves to Make the Most of Any Available Wall Space

When I work with clients needing more storage space, the walls are one place where we look for options. As I’ve noted before, wall-mounted shelves can be used in spaces where floor-based shelving won’t work.

Gubi focuses on relaunching designs from the 1930s to the 1970s; one of its products is the Demon shelving system created by Mathieu Matégot. 

This shelving is often described as “modular” as it comes in multiple sizes: a single shelf or three, four or five shelves. Four different lengths are available, too. However, once you pick your size, it wouldn’t be easy to add a shelf—to go from four shelves to five, for example. So there’s not quite as much flexibility as would be ideal to meet changing needs.

Up The Wall from Bent Hansen is a fully modular shelving system. The end user can buy as many 2-shelf sets as needed. The design above uses eight sets.

The laminate shelves fit together in a cross, and the sets can be laid out in whatever pattern best fits the end user’s space. 

Shelves can also be innovative in many different ways. The floating Dash shelves from UrbanCase, designed by Darin Montgomery, have a “unique mounting system” that “allows the one inch thick shelf to hold up to forty pounds requiring no stud mounting locations." 

The Hitch Shelf from Umbra Shift has a double-bracket system; each of the two shelves can be installed horizontally or vertically. The vertical option allows the end user to display something like a book or a magazine. Most end users I know are looking for horizontal shelving, so this would be over-designed for them, but it might be perfect for someone.

Paperback was designed by Studio Parade for Spectrum Design. It would be good for narrow spaces, since the shelves which fit into the wall panels are only 12 cm deep—less than five inches. (There are also some larger tabs which are 20 cm deep; it would be nice if these were optional rather than standard.) Paperback might also be good for any end users who get tired of tilting their heads to read the book titles on the spines.

Another design for small spaces is the Luft Shelf from Mox, designed by Anna Salonen. It’s only 9.7 cm deep and 9.5 cm tall (if hung horizontally) or wide (if hung vertically). It’s made from powder coated steel. 

Clopen is a prototype product from Torafu Architects. It has a secret drawer that is opened with magnetic "keys.” It sounds nice, except I can just see those keys either getting misplaced or being left out in the open, somewhat defeating the idea of a secret locked drawer.

A shelf with an ordinary drawer or two, such as this one from woodworker Gideon Rettich, might be much more practical.

The Mesh Series Shelves from Bride and Wolfe combine a shelf with a perforated powder coated metal backdrop from which things can be hung. Some of the backdrops also have magnetized spots. Combination products like this sometimes work well, providing storage for things that often get used together but that don’t all work with the same type of storage solutions. 

Note: In this case, the items on the shelf would have to be on the short side so as not to interfere with any hanging items.

The Beam from NakNak, designed by Kyuhyung Cho and John Astbury, is a metal shelf with a hidden space behind the wooden beam. That secondary storage space could be used for postcards, notebooks or anything that wouldn’t stand up well on a shelf without some support. Still, some things like large magazines might still tend to bow over if placed behind the beam.

I could see this being used in an entryway, with keys and such on the shelf and incoming/outgoing mail behind the beam.

The Kubo shelf from Maze Interior, designed by Studio Malin Lundmark, provides two-tiered storage in a different way. The Kubo provides better support for magazines, but wouldn’t work for the smaller items that the Beam handles well.