Give Your Kitchen Shelves An Upgrade With Ina Garten's Easy Tip

The kitchen is the heart of the home. It's where meals are prepared and a gathering place for families. And when it comes to being in the kitchen, Ina Garten knows a thing or two. From preparing delicious food to making your space feel warm and inviting, Garten has an ever growing list of kitchen tips and tricks that she swears by. One of her ideas will add depth and dimension to kitchen shelves, giving you an upgraded look without needing to spend money remodeling.

Previously, Garten shared that you can decorate stellar kitchen shelves by mixing old and new items, as well as adding in books beside dishes. She has another simple tip that can make a big impact – choose different shapes of items to sit next to each other on your shelves. Instead of just keeping all of the round items together, try mixing shapes and styles, such as having square dishes next to round bowls or having a cake stand sitting next to a platter that's leaning up against the back of the wall. In a post on Substack, Garten shared that she feels, "a shelf of all round bowls or all flat plates can be a little boring."

While Ina Garten's kitchen storage solutions are both convenient and simple to follow, they also can help make your space feel elevated and lived in, without feeling staged. To add visual interest to your kitchen shelves and the dinner table, it's about combining different shapes with different sizes of items. Mixing and matching dishes can add depth to your shelves, as it helps draw the eye in. Even if the dishes are all the same color, you can mix things up by grabbing plates that are a different shape from the bowls. You could pick square plates with round bowls or round plates with square bowls. This can create a curated collection that feels personalized without being disorganized or messy. And then, to create visual interest on your kitchen shelf, stack the round bowls next to the square plates. 

Playing with height will also help to emphasize the different shapes being used. Square bowls can help with giving you height difference on a shelf, as they tend to sit higher when nested. However height can also depend on the size of the bowl walls. You could also stack plates next to large serving dishes to break up the uniformity of the shelves while creating a functional storage area that makes setting a dinner table easy.