- Cut wood to the dimensions below.
- Prep wood using a pencil, measuring tape, and straightedge or ruler.
- Mark measurements on plywood with a pencil, measuring tape, and straightedge or ruler.
- Stain or paint the wood.
- Assemble the base and back of the shelf.
- Attach sides.
- Finish and hang the shelf.
These DIY wall shelves can be customized to fit any interior style, from modern to rustic, industrial, Scandinavian, or boho-style. There are 30 ideas for varying sizes and styles of shelves, making them easy to build and suitable for displaying decor in any room of your house.
These shelves can be attached to the wall without brackets or hardware, making them a beginner-friendly project. For those looking for extra storage, this guide offers 34+ step-by-step tutorials on building any style of DIY shelves from reclaimed wood.
To make a modern DIY wall shelf, follow these steps:
- Cut wood with a miter saw.
- Sand the boards and remove any dust.
- Assemble the frame using 1×2 boards.
In this tutorial for DIY floating shelves, we outline the simple steps of building wall-to-wall wood shelves in our workshop space. We wanted wall-to-wall thicker solid wood shelves that might look like they were floating but not necessarily be.
To build these shelves, check for studs and mark where the screws are on the first bracket. Use wood glue and 3″ wood screws to build the shelf frame. Cut the wall shelves to size and add edges around them.
📹 2 Ways To Do Floating Shelves – Which Is Stronger?
I made two different kinds of floating shelves using different methods, and tested both of them by jumping on them. The results …
📹 Easy DIY FLOATING SHELVES No bracket | DIY CREATORS
Floating shelves can enhance any area. For less than $10 you could make 3 all of these. The beauty of this is you can make them …
Why are people complaining about needing tools? You need a drill, a saw and a screwdriver. If you don’t have those, why on earth are you looking at installing shelving? Anyway, thanks for the tip – I’d been trying to figure out a clean way to hide a retaining screw, and I like your idea of screwing into one of the dowels.
You inspired me to do it! I watched this when it first came out and everything was way over my head. After doing more projects and studying, I watched this again — and I realize that I CAN do it! I felts so empowered following along. I will be working on it over the next several days and cannot wait to let you know how it went. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the support and encouragement! You deserve FAR more endorsements and sponsors. You are so gifted!
Seriously you guys who don’t own tools, go buy a $10 hand saw and a $20 used drill. I own some really good tools but there are so many ways to build something. No one goes out and buys a woodshops worth of tools in one outing, you slowly build a collection over many years. The tools you buy for this project will come in handy in the future, plus you’ll get a better shelf and pride in your work
First, I’ll say that these shelves are gorgeous. Your very clear and concise instructions along with explanation for doing things or using certain products was extremely helpful. I felt like you really have a compassion for helping others to learn. Thanks. I will be making a couple of sets for my home.
Hi friends, if you intend on using the saw yourself please do NOT use gloves when sawing… Gloves are prone to getting caught in the blade and dragging your fingers and hand into the blade… So go ahead and saw like the gentleman did in the article, just go slow and be careful and do it without gloves
OMFG – use the speed square as a guide… that just blew my mind! So simple and obvious yet this is the first time I’ve ever considered doing that. I now feel stupid for years of avoiding my circular saw due to my exceptional ability to not cut a straight line. I know it was just an off-hand thought for you, but thanks anyway you just changed my shop life.
Wife has been trying to find “doable” floating shelves and these were them. I ended up doing screws into all three dowels because i ended up with a small gap where I made the rip cuts. I’d suggest wood gluing the dowels into the small piece against the wall, too. As a beginner, DIY’er I appreciate the article and look forward to more
I would not be keen on putting heavy expensive objects on shelves like this. Three dowels taking all the weight of my camera lenses!!! I think your method is very clever idea but I would replace the wood dowels with metal dowel or some threaded bar. Great article edits. Clear and straight to the point. Happy new year from Ireland 🙂
As a licensed contractor, anybody thinking about doing this, DO NOT use those silly drywall anchors. You’re asking for a disaster and major expense out of nowhere like the random shelves that fell down in the back room while I was prepping kitchen cabinets literally 3 days ago, had to call the client to let him know whoever put those in destroyed the wall… Hit the studs people! Lastly if you’re doing this for lets say a media station where you are much lower on the wall, 2 1/4″ interior screws minimal, 2 5/8″ max, gotta hit the studs but don’t want to hit an electrical line either.
this is the best article on youtube i have seen for making a floating shelf. all the other ones make ridiculously thick shelves to hide all the internal mating structure. this method uses the shelf board itself as its own fastening structure. would it be stronger if the 2×8 (or 2×10) was cut in more of a 60/40 or 50/50 split to give more anchoring force to the piece fixed to the wall or will the necessary bolts be too leveraged? excellent article for timing and all the superfluous action is implied A+++.
Yeah, very nice work, but it’s a little too involved. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a woodworker and appreciate the elegance of your solution. However, I just watched another article where the shelves were installed with threaded rods that were just pounded into the studs and the shelf onto the rods. It was strong enough for the guy to jump on the shelf. All that method requires is a drill and a hammer for installation. Not nearly as elegant, but sooo much easier. Might cost a few more pennies, but I’ll take it. Again, very nice job!
Excellent tutorial and great end product. I would also like to know how much these could hold with 3 1/2″ dowels for support. Anyone? I suppose you could use aluminum dowels instead of wood to boost the weight capacity of the shelves. Also use large head pan screws to the studs with large washers? Is any of that even necessary, or would dowels and 2×6 wood work? What wood as well? So many questions… great instructional though, thanks!
So glad I found these articles! I do have a few questions: if I’m making the shelves longer, I would need more dowels. What size should the interval between each of these be? If I do a 6″ shelf (it’s just for spray paints and other craft supplies—8 might be too deep), do I go shorter than the 4″ on the dowel?
What if… What if i had a longer shelf to install? Wow everything be same-same? Would I just screw the screws into the wall at the same intervals and add more dowels? Or is there a fancy calculation that will provide the proper depth of dowel needed, screw size needed and general spacing based on how long a shelf is?
Very good method for making floating shelves!!! After a lot of research I decided on this method and it worked great. A couple of things to keep in mind, my home is a older home and has lath and plaster walls so they are not 100% flat and true so I had to do some minor sanding of the attachment bracket, secondly drill the holes before cutting to 1 1/2″, I forgot and was a bit of a pain. I ended up making the 1/2″ dowels a bit longer, they extended 4″ into the shelf. I went with a routered ogee edging on the top of the shelves to get rid of the rounded edge of the 2X6. I plan on making more shelves.
This article is awesome! I do have a question. Not sure if it’ll get answered due to the article being older. Question about when you counter synced the safety screw and drilled in the dowel. Did you then take it out and add it at the very end? Or did I miss something and you have two? Can’t wait to do this article!