We usually turn to Ina Garten for elegant recipes, gardening tips and hosting advice. But did you know the Queen of Chambray also has plenty of decorating and design knowledge? She recently shared five tips for best arranging the kitchen shelves of your dreams, and they just might inspire you to give your favorite room in a house a casual makeover.
5 Clever Tips from Ina Garten for Arranging Your Kitchen Shelves
The Contessa knows all
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Published Aug 1, 2025
Michael Loccisano/Staff/Fiordaliso/Getty Images
“I love working in a kitchen with beautiful things, but I hate anything that’s purely decorative,” Garten wrote in an Instagram caption. “If you display dishes and trays that you actually use and love, your kitchen just feels alive. There is an antique dealer in Belgium (@axelvervoordt) whose library is exquisite, not just because his bookshelves are gorgeous, but also because he’s read all the books. When you walk in, you just know it’s a library that someone loves.”
The photo carousel shows four different kitchen hutches of varying styles, adorned with everything from creamy white bowls to shiny silver platters. They’re meant to show examples of Garten’s clever tips for organizing your own kitchen shelves, pantries or hutches.
“If you’re setting up your own kitchen shelves, you can just move things around until you find the most pleasing arrangement!” she continues in the caption. Here are her top tips from the post:
- Mix old and new
- Choose a small color palette
- Choose different shapes and heights to sit next to each other
- Lean a beautiful plate or platter against the back of the wall of the shelves to give height to your arrangement
- Mix it up with books that you love
I’m no design expert, but there are a few key takeaways here that I love. I know she’s the CEO of “good” olive oil and “if you can’t make it yourself, store-bought is fine,” but I like that she encourages us to use what we have instead of spending a ton of money on new items, whether it’s a set of plates you’ve had forever to your most treasured, weathered cookbooks.
I also love that she simplifies essential design elements, like color and depth, for newbies. As someone who lowkey decorates every room in my home like a college dorm, I tend to lean in one of two directions: cluttered with too many shapes, colors and pieces, or overly minimalistic and symmetrical to a snooze-inducing fault. Her tips remind us to not overthink it, but also to have fun with the arrangement without making it too stuffy or boring.
To me, the TLDR reads two-fold: 1) keep it simple and 2) make it your own, ideally with items you already love and adore.
