Ways to hang wall shelves

So far, we have dealt with a large number of ways to hang shelves between the sides that are mostly used on furniture. One special category of shelves are wall shelves.

Today, for most of the wall mounting methods, it is common to drill a hole in the wall where an anchor and a screw should be placed. In this way, the screw is firmly put into the wall, and the shelf is then hung on the screw using various methods.



- Plastic Anchor 


Shelf hanged  with plastic anchor and screw

There are many furniture pieces, such as spice cabinets, wall cabinets, kitchen wall cabinets, wall shelves and the like, which have a portion on their construction (if not, reinforcements can be made) that is solid enough to make possible their mounting directly to the wall with screws and anchors. This is the simplest and most reliable variant of hanging.



- Floating Shelves (Torsion Boxes)

In the following pictures you can see how you can hang your floating shelves on the wall.


Floating shelf installed with cleat


Floating shelf installed with cleat


Floating shelf installed with French cleat


Floating shelf installed with French cleat


Floating shelf installed with aluminum angle


Floating shelf installed with aluminum angle



- Brace Floating Shelf


Floating shelf hanged with brace


This is a type of commercial hardware that is used to hang floating shelves. If you have learned to weld, you can easily make one in your workshop.



- Triangle  Brackets 


This is a very simple way to hang shelves. Make a wooden bracket in the shape of a right triangle. Fix it to the wall with anchors and screws, so that the upper side is horizontal. Fix the shelf to the upper side. In the picture you can see two ways of making triangle brackets. The first one is very simple using 3 slats and screws. The other one requires woodworking joints. Various woodworking joints are suitable for making triangle shelf brackets.


Triangle shelf - Screws, nails or dowels


Triangle shelf - Woodworking joints



- Keyhole Hanger with Screws


Keyhole shelf hanger


The keyhole hanger is a very simple type of shelf hanging hardware, and you can either make it in your workshop or buy it at the store. The keyhole hanger is a metal tile with little holes, through which you can fix it to a suitable place on the shelf construction, and a big hole in the shape of a keyhole that serves to hang the construction on a screw put into the wall. There are various variants of the keyhole hanger, and if something light is hung on the wall (a picture, a small shelf, etc.), you can even use a pull tab of drinking can as a keyhole.



- Glass Shelf Supports


Glass shelf support

Glass shelf supports, as their very name suggests, serve to hang glass shelves. These can be most often found in bathrooms. As you can see in the picture, a screw and anchor are used to fasten the support to the wall and there is a groove and screw on it (usually grub screw). The shelf is placed in the groove and fixed in the support by tightening the grub screw. Since glass shelves are not designed for heavy loads, this is a satisfactory solution. You need to put the anchor completely into the wall or cut off the excess. If you don’t do this, the support will be able to spin on its axis and the shelf will be unstable. There are a lot of supports of this type, from the simplest ones as shown in the picture to the decorative ones. In any case, they are very visible and their aesthetics are very important. 


- Scroll Saw shelf Brackets


Scroll saw shelf bracket


If a triangle bracket is made with the scroll saw technique, a beautiful decorative bracket will be obtained. Scroll saw brackets can be of various dimensions and shapes, and on our site there are several pages dedicated to them. Scroll saw brackets are fixed to the wall with screws and anchors, and a shelf is put up with screws or dowels. Scroll saw shelf brackets are very decorative but difficult to make.



- Standard Shelf Bracket


Standard metal shelf bracket

There is a plenty of shelf brackets that you can buy on the market. They are made of various types of metal and are generally considered a reliable and fast shelf hanging solution. They are fixed to the wall with screws and anchors. Usually they don’t look nice, so they should not be chosen at places where aesthetics are important, but rather where beauty is not a priority. Standard shelf brackets are a great solution because they are easy to install and, depending on their dimensions, can withstand large loads. 


- Wrought Iron Shelf Brackets


Wrought iron shelf bracket

If you are into metal processing and welding, you can create beautiful shelf brackets from wrought iron in your workshop. This is a shelf hanging method that allows boundless creativity. Please type the following keywords into a search box: ’wrought iron shelf brackets’, and you will obtain a large number of both simple shelf brackets and those of exceptional design. A good thing is that if you don’t have any experience or the desire to design them yourselves, on the Internet you can find wrought iron shelf brackets of different sizes and designs and choose any to your liking.




- Shop-made ways to hang a shelf 

- Commercial ways to hang a shelf 

- Woodworking joints suitable for supporting shelves

- Decorative ways to hang a shelf