We are thrilled to have partnered with Ann Marie Bernardon, who has just started her own blog, all about design for real life! She specializes in helping clients choose materials for a new home construction and renovation.  Overall, she provides guidance throughout the general design process! Here she shares with us about why open shelving in a kitchen isn’t ideal.

I am sure you have seen countless beautiful kitchens online that have wonderful cabinetry, stunning stone surfaces, perfect appliances, contrasting colors, and open shelving with perfectly displayed beautiful and functional accessories.  Please do not attempt the latter at home. Unless your kitchen is a dustless museum where artifacts are only viewed and never touched, please don’t go there. If you are willing to keep up the appearance of a shelf that can’t hold anything ugly, then go for it.  If you are willing to constantly dust and arrange said items, then go for it. If you are willing to monitor others in your household who may disturb your arrangements, then go for it.

Open shelving in a kitchen looks chic and lived in, but only when not actually lived in.  It is decorative and thus must accommodate the lowest common denominator of your tolerance for order.  I happen to need order, need things to be easily aesthetically pleasing, and don’t want to spend a lot of time satisfying my need for order.  I am jealous of those who can live with disorder and purely practical tableaus. I am just not one of them and I don’t think I am in the minority.

So, before you install that expensive and trendy open shelf in your kitchen that takes up valuable storage space, think long and hard about what kind of person you are and how you find solace in a space in which you spend many hours a day.  If you can accept the responsibility of open shelving, then teach me how as well. Would love to hear any success stories in this popular design!

If you want to read more from Ann Marie, visit her directly on her blog!