Interior design: How to rearrange your shelves like a pro 

Jennifer Sheahan shares advice on styling ledges and nooks to add pizzazz to rooms and homes of all shapes and sizes

Shelf styling in Jennifer Sheahan's Rathmines home. Pictures: Moya Nolan

Shelving is a wonderful thing — a flexible and useful way to infuse personality, art, storage, colour, and texture into your home. But, done wrong, unstyled shelves look messy and, frankly, stressful.

I added narrow shelves above my banquette dining area, thinking I’d spend half an hour arranging some pictures and candles on them and calling it a day — a full two days and a minor meltdown later I finally arrived at an arrangement I was happy with. Turns out there is a whole art to styling shelves that I had grossly underestimated.