A shelf and a shelving unit do the same job: storing things that are meant to stay on show. But the choice between them is almost always dictated not by taste but by what the room is short of: floor or wall.
When to go for a wall shelf
When floor space is worth more than wall space. In a small bedroom, a narrow hallway or a child's room with two beds, every free square of floor matters more than storage capacity.
When you need to fill an empty wall above something. Above a desk, above a chest of drawers, above a bed: places where a shelving unit simply won't fit.
When the piece needs to look light. A shelf doesn't divide the room and doesn't read as furniture; it reads as part of the wall.
In our range this is the AMBER shelf, 160 × 30 × 30 cm: a long wall shelf spanning the wall above a desk or sofa.
The honest limitation: a shelf holds as much as your wall holds. Plasterboard without a fixing insert won't do for books: you need a wall plug for the specific material, and that is a question for a fitter, not for the furniture.
When to go for a shelving unit
When you can't drill the wall. A rented flat, concrete that won't take a drill, or simply not wanting to make holes.
When you need a lot of storage at once. A shelving unit gives several levels on the same floor area, many times more than a single shelf.
When the piece needs to divide the space. An open shelving unit in the middle of a room separates a zone without blocking the light, unlike a wardrobe.
We have two different types:
- Stepped: Vanity (156 × 34 × 100 cm), Vanity White (156 × 38 × 160 cm), Said 5 and Said 7. The stepped shape makes the silhouette lighter and gives sections of different heights for different things.
- Metal loft: the WOK shelving unit (120 × 38 × 197 cm). The tallest in the range, an open frame made of box-section tube.
Height: three figures worth knowing
Above a desk: 45–55 cm from the desktop. Lower and you hit your head when you stand up; higher and you can't reach without getting up. This is the most common mistake in a home office.
Above a sofa: at least 45 cm above the backrest. People tip their heads back, and a shelf at the level of the back of the head is dangerous. If the backrest is low, measure not from it but from the head height of a seated person.
Above a bed: only if there is 50 cm of clearance above the headboard. Otherwise the two people sleeping there will bang the backs of their heads every morning. This is covered separately in the article on low beds: a shelf above the bed is often what makes people choose a lower headboard.
A free wall: centre at 150–160 cm from the floor, that is, at the eye level of a standing person.
Depth: how much you need for what
Our models are 30–38 cm deep. This range isn't random:
- 30 cm: books, decor, frames. A standard book is 15–20 cm deep; the rest is a margin so nothing overhangs.
- 34–38 cm: files, boxes, equipment. Vanity (34), Vanity White (38), WOK (38).
- Over 40 cm makes no sense for open storage: whatever slides to the back can't be seen and never gets taken out.
The main condition for open storage
It is worth saying plainly: everything that stands on a shelf or shelving unit is always on view.
That works when there aren't many things and they are kept in order. It doesn't work when there are a lot of them: then open storage turns into visual noise, and the room looks cluttered with the same number of things that would go unnoticed in a chest of drawers.
Assess yourself honestly, not your intentions. If in doubt, closed storage is more reliable: chest of drawers or wardrobe.
A separate note on plant stands
The AMBER set is three floor-standing plant stands of different heights (30 × 60, 30 × 90 and 30 × 120 cm). The logic is the same as with a stepped shelving unit: different levels create a composition, not a row of identical objects.
In practice: put the tall stand further from the window and the low one closer, so the plants don't shade each other.
Made to your size
A recess between a wardrobe and the wall, a narrow stretch of wall, a sloping ceiling: we make the width, depth and height to fit your space. For shelves and shelving units this is useful more often than for other furniture: they almost always have to fit into what is already there.
In brief
- A shelf saves floor space, a shelving unit needs no drilling: choose by what you are short of
- Above a desk: 45–55 cm from the desktop; above a sofa: at least 45 cm above the backrest
- Above a bed only if there is 50 cm of clearance above the headboard
- 30 cm deep for books, 34–38 cm for files and equipment
- Open storage only works where there aren't many things
