If you are thinking about building a bar with bar shelves then here are ideas to inspire you. These are simple bar shelf ideas, but if you want a more complex design with have plans to help with your project.
Bar Shelf Ideas
If you are like me then you some how ended up with a thousand beer and wine glasses.
I am not sure how I collected so many cups, but I had no place to store them in my small kitchen.
Even after I donated several glasses, I still had way too many, so I definitely needed to add bar shelves.
Lighted bar shelves not only look visually pleasing, but they serve as great storage for liquor and barware.
One thing I regret about my home bar, is that I did not add enough shelving.
Here are bar shelf ideas to help you figure out the best design for your home bar.
Bar Accent Wall with Shelves
Mounting floating shelves to a wall looks great alone, but it it looks even better with a textured accent wall behind them.
The texture and sconce lighting make this space cozy and inviting. You can buy a sheet of faux brick then paint it or do a German schmear over the brick to tone down the red tones in the brick.
Split Bar Shelves
The great thing about splitting the bar shelves like this, is that a person can comfortably stand or sit in between these shelves.
The wood shelves also, leave enough room for a wine fridge or a kegerator.
If you have some scrap wood left from build your bar, then this is a good way to save on lumber because you only need small pieces of wood to build these.
Long Floating Bar shelves
If you want to do a more simple and clean bar shelving design then add floating bar shelves behind the bar.
Adding bar shelving on the wall will be much easier than adding the shelving into the bar itself.
The cuts are much more intricate when adding shelving into a bar and you will use a lot more lumber.
If you decided to add floating bar shelving to the wall, you will have extra room for a wine fridge or kegerator behind your bar.
Mounted Bar Shelves
If you are mounting a tv behind your home bar, mounting bar shelves on either side is another great option. You can display liquor bottes, decor, or sports memorabilia on the shelves.
The shelves would look great with led lighting below each shelf to bring subtle lighting to the bar area while accenting the items on the shelves.
Built in Bar Shelf
Here is a bar shelf built on the side of the bar, to leave room for someone to comfortable sit in middle of the bar.
These bar shelves were built using scrap wood from the DIY bar project.
So, the design might not be the best out there, but it didn’t cost anything extra.
Before making these shelves I made sure to measure how tall the bottles would be, so they would be able to fit on the shelves.
I had an old wine wrack that I was going to throw away, so I took this part of the wine holder and adhered it to the bar shelves.
Building this wine wrack would have been tedious, so that is wine I just found something that fit nicely in the bar shelf.
You might be able to find something similar to this at a home improvement store, but you should price it out before buying it.
It might be cheaper to buy a used wine wrack and take the section out that you need to attach it to your bar shelf like I did here.
Built in Bar Shelves with Tons of Storage
If you have a lot of barware and bottles then this liquor shelf will give you plenty of space to display all of your items.
There is an additional bar top and tons of bars shelving, so you will never run out storage for glasses or liquor.
This is how I should of built the bar shelves behind my home bar because this design adds a lot more room for storage.
A customer of ours used our bar blueprints and made adjustments to add more bar shelving as as seen below.
Hutch Bar Storage
A friend of ours took an old hutch and cut it down to make a small 2 person bar.
The hutch already had the bar shelving built into it, so the bar was then wrapped in plywood and stained.
Using a hutch saved a lot of money on lumber, and the bar shelving was easy to move around for storing taller or shorter items.
Here are more before and after photos of this hutch bar build.
Simple Lighted Bar Shelves
To save money on plywood when building your bar, you can leave the bar frame exposed like this bar.
The exposed frame can then be used as bar shelving as seen below!
This will not only save on lumber, but this will save a ton of time with cuts and measurements.
We hope you found these bar shelving ideas helpful for your basement bar design!
If you want to learn how to build a bar without any woodworking experience then here are some great directions!
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