Welcome back everyone to the third week of the One Room Challenge. If you need to be brought up to speed please see Week 1 & Week 2. I feel like we are making pretty good progress on Sarina's office space, because we don't have to paint or make any renovations, its nice and easy. Now, while we are awaiting for some shipments to arrive which is pretty typical when decorating a new space, I've decided to get the bookcase in good styling order. I really want it to be the focal point of the room. Everything you see in this bookcase Sarina already had in her loft. When decorating, I love to bring in items from around the house and put them to fresh use. It usually will bring them back to life. They key here, to getting your office space looking fresh, fantastic and inspiring is organizing it well. Today, I will share with you guys, all of my tips for styling a chic and organized office bookcase.
We start with a blank and clean canvas. Always make sure before you style your shelving its all clean and dust free. Dust shows up and collects fast, so don't be lazy and clean it up. Then you need to take good inventory of what you have to work with.
Now that we have a good idea of we what are working with, we move on to styling. I always teach my clients that the key to a great looking bookcase is all about visual spacing. You can't just throw things up and expect it to look good, you must map it out. I like to start by deciding where the weight will go. For a bookcase like this, you want to make an invisible X as a marker for where i will put the weight. Where the lines of the X would be, I add the weight {items of larger size or darker colors} This keeps things looking balanced and even, which gives you a "put together" kind of look. In this situation, I decided to start with the black boxes, heaver weight on bottom.
Then I decided to add the vintage items on either size as the top of the X, as they are both lighter in weight and have great height for toppers. For the top middle space, I put in white magazine fillers to add in mags that didn't work with the coloring and sizing look. The white fills in the blank space without so much weight.
I feel like this is a great start here, so now its time to start filling in the rest of the puzzle.
For the bottom left of the X, I put her small black piggy bank and above that as a blank filler, I added her silver can of painting supplies. On the bottom right we added her black briefcase with gorgeous gold hardware to balance the gold in the vintage items. Then I added the stacks of books and magazines to fill in the right side blank spaces. Notice I used only the black and white spine books, to keep with the color palate.
My favorite marbled file folders are the finishing touch because they are silver and gold and pull together all of the silver and gold items mixed up here. I love that we mixed metallics on this case. Most people shy away from it but I am a huge fan of silver and gold together.
So, here we have it, the bookcase is organized, styled up and ready for and inspired work day. Want to get the look?
There we have it. The final look. Now, if the rest of my things could arrive we can get on to the desk and art wall, etc. Don't forget to stop by and check out the other rooms in this challenge...
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