Planning a Shelving Bay: Widths, Depths, and What Shares a Standard

Width is decided once per bay. Depth is decided shelf by shelf. Everything else is composition.

**A bay is the space between two standards. Every shelf in that bay is the same width, because the standards sit at the shelf edges and define it. Depth is not constrained the same way — it can change row by row within the same bay. And adjacent bays share the standard between them, so a run of n bays takes n + 1 standards.**

Those three rules decide almost every layout question. This post is about what to do once you know them.

How wide to make a bay in the first place — why 24 in and 36 in, and how to fill a wall of any length out of the two — is a post of its own. Take that as settled here.

1. Width is a property of the bay, not of the shelf

The standards are the shelf edges. Move them apart and you have defined how wide every shelf between them must be. So width is not a per-shelf choice — it is chosen once, when you place the standards, and every shelf in that bay inherits it.

Between bays it is free. A 36 in bay sits perfectly happily beside a 24 in one, and rows do not have to line up across the wall.

2. Depth is the axis nobody plans, and the one that ages best

Three depths, and they are genuinely different tools rather than three sizes of the same thing.

Two things follow that are worth knowing before you order.

Depth can change row by row. A single bay can run 16 in at the bottom for equipment and boxes, 12 in through the middle for books, and 8 in at the top where the wall only needs to hold objects.

Deeper shelves work the connection harder. A 16 in shelf holds more weight and holds it further from the wall, so the load at the bracket rises on both counts. That is why the 16 in depth provides the option of a heavier cantilever. It isn't necessary for books, and is more of a bookend than structure, but it is available.

3. Composition: what to do once the widths add up

A 7 ft wall comes out as two 24 in bays and one 36 in bay. That is arithmetic, and it has exactly one answer. Where those three bays go relative to each other is not arithmetic, and it has several.

Symmetry. The 36 in bay centred with a 24 in bay either side reads as calm and formal, and it suits a wall you want to recede. It also puts your widest, most useful bay where the eye lands first.

Asymmetry. The wide bay off to one side is the more interesting composition and the harder one to get right. It works when the contents justify it — a run of tall books, a record collection, a single large object that needs the width.

Clustering. Mass the dense material toward the middle and leave the outer bays sparse, with a few objects on them. The wall reads as one composition with a centre rather than as a grid that happens to be full. This is the single most effective thing you can do to stop open shelving looking like a warehouse.

Building around a television. Centre the screen, leave the bays immediately around it open or sparsely filled, and let the shelving run above, below and to either side. The open middle is what stops the screen looking buried. This is the layout most people are actually trying to draw when they start planning a shelf wall.

4. Leaving room for what is not a shelf

Shelving that stays useful for a decade eventually holds something that is not a shelf. A desk surface, a drawer, a cabinet.

We are not promising those parts here. The point is narrower and more useful: those objects have widths at which they work and widths at which they are a joke — a 36 in desk is a desk, a 24 in desk is a laptop shelf. So if there is a stretch of that wall where you can imagine wanting to sit down one day, make that bay 36 in now.

What this costs

Width is fixed once per bay. Changing your mind about a bay width means moving a standard and replacing every shelf in that bay. Depth you can change one shelf at a time; width you cannot.

Three depths and two widths is six shelf sizes. More choice at the point of ordering than a single-size system, and it is genuinely possible to order a shelf that does not fit the bay you meant it for. Match the shelf width to the Hangtrack width and it cannot go wrong.

Composition is work. The system will not stop you building something ugly. A wall of identical full bays is the default outcome, and it is rarely the best one.

Before you order

1. What is the wall's actual clear width? Measure between the real obstructions — doors, windows, furniture — not the nominal wall.
2. Which bay is going to hold the heaviest thing? Make that one 16 in, and put it low.
3. Where does the eye land? That bay is your composition. Decide whether it is a wide centre, an off-centre mass, or an open gap around a screen.
4. Is there a bay you might one day sit at? Make it 36 in.
5. How many standards does your layout actually need? n + 1 if the rows line up. More if you are deliberately staggering them, because every unsupported shelf edge needs a standard under it.

The parts this post describes: the Shelves in 24 and 36 in widths and 8, 12 and 16 in depths, from $84.99; the Shelf Standards at $49, shipped as two usable 42.5 in halves; and the Hangtrack at $35 and $39. A complete bay arrives as a Starter Kit, and each additional bay as an Add-on Kit, which carries one standard rather than two for exactly the reason above.