5 Mistakes People Make When Installing Floating Shelves

Floating shelves are beautiful options for vertical storage. They are elegant, simple, and relatively easy to set up. That said, many people get overly ambitious when installing floating shelves and make easily avoidable mistakes. Don’t be those people—read on to discover helpful tips that will lead you to level, strong, beautiful shelves in your home!

Not Measuring Correctly

Unfortunately, eyeballing is never as accurate as you think it is. Without a measurer, you can easily misjudge height, spacing, or width, which will make your shelves unstable or visually wonky.

Write down the dimensions of your shelf, use painter’s tape or pencil to accurately lay the placement on your wall, and double-check everything before bringing out the drill. We promise that this step will be worth the time!

Not Using a Level

Even if you plan everything perfectly, it’s possible for measurements to get a little off as you drill and mount the shelf. This is something you want to avoid because even a slightly tilted shelf isn’t optimally functional.

Again, don’t trust your eyes. Use a level to ensure your shelves are perfectly straight before securing them to the wall. A level is super easy and fast to use, so there’s no reason to skip this step!

Not Bracing for Weight

Floating shelves are not the most inherently strong. That doesn’t mean you can’t put heavy items on them, but you do have to properly brace for the weight. It starts with buying a shelf designed to bear a good deal of weight. The next step is choosing the right shelf brackets for heavy items, whether they’re books, lamps, or ceramics. Finally, you should buy anchors that won’t tear away from the wall under weight—but more on that below.

Using the Wrong Wall Anchors

Wall anchors are small devices that screw into and expand behind the mounting wall to provide strength by leveraging shear force. Without anchors, your shelf is much more likely to break away from the wall if you place anything remotely heavy on it.

The right choice of anchor depends on the type of wall you’re installing your shelves into. The most common type is for drywall, but varieties for brick and cement also exist. If you need help finding the right anchors for your installation, any local hardware store employee should be able to assist.

Not Searching for Studs

If you’re drilling into drywall, then you must look for studs, which are vertical beams in the framing the drywall is attached to. Studs are almost always wooden, but they can be metal.

When you drill into your walls to insert the anchors, you want to avoid the studs because they won’t allow the anchors to expand. Alternatively, you can drill into the studs and simply use long, strong screws to support the shelves—this also provides adequate weight-bearing support. A stud finder is a device that can detect where the studs are behind drywall so you can mark their location and drill into them (or avoid them).

By avoiding these mistakes people make when installing floating shelves, you should end up with a high-quality, functional setup. Best of luck!