Martha Stewart's kitchen shelves are a sleek and smart use of dead space – they are making me rethink my own kitchen storage

A Martha Stewart home is a site to behold. The domestic expert shows off her knowledge via handsome decor and innovative styling solutions, as evidenced by a set of images posted to the unofficial Martha Stewart archives on Instagram.

We recently dug up some photos of Martha's old Lily Pond Lane home's kitchen, shared to the Martha Moments account, and they are giving us some new kitchen shelving ideas. Of course, the kitchen is decked out with chef-worthy appliances, but what really caught our eyes was the shelving unit.

Set between two identical, silver refrigerators, wood vertical shelves create space to house books and decor, including ceramic bowls and dishes. The shelves are uniquely positioned in a T-shape, featuring additional storage on top of the fridges themselves.

Dead space in the kitchen is all too common, which is why I love this intelligent shelving structure so much. Martha's kitchen could have easily just included the center shelf between the fridges, but the units above them are fantastic for extra storage as well as a point of visual interest in the space.

I also love the varied layering of items in the shelves. Martha has opted for a mix of spine-out books, lined up vertically though not color-coordinated. The mix of shades stands out in the solid wood shelves, disrupting the brown with a variety of colors.

Meanwhile, her display of individual bowls and plates in shelves gives each piece signifcant room to shine, while also allowing ample accessibility to the practical items. Stacks of bowls and plates can be difficult to carefully remove and put back into shelves as high as Martha's, so the solo pieces are a wise (and safe) choice.

The addition of a ladder can be useful to reach those higher shelves; however, I recommend being strategic with which items you are placing on shelves. A good options is to keep frequently used cookbooks and/or dishes closer to eye level and lower to the ground, while more decorative dishes and rarely used books can be placed higher up.

I also recommend experimenting with the kinds of items you are displaying. While Martha's shelves mostly contain books and a few standout ceramics, vases, beautiful cookware, or even plants make for fantastic decorative kitchen ideas.

Finally, be mindful of the amount of space you leave between shelves. We can see that Martha has created larger shelving areas for the books, while her ceramics are stored in narrow parts of the unit. Plan out what you want to put in your shelves prior to spacing them out to ensure everything fits properly.

Shop the kitchen bookshelf edit

As per usual, Martha has shown us that there is always room for home improvement, and implementing smart storage in our kitchens is now top of our list.