Furniture Design: The Plant Shelf

My wife is an avid house plant enthusiast. We love having the natural green in our house, giving us fresh air and color.

But we're not the only ones who "like" the plants.

Design Goals

With our little fuzzy troublemakers in mind, I set out to design the perfect plant shelf. I had several goals in mind from the beginning:

• The shelf should feel open, with plenty of light. ☀️
• It needs good airflow, while still helping to control humidity. 🌬️
• The cats could not have easy access to nomming on the plants. 😼
• Wide doors were essential, so plants could be cared for easily, and moved in and out of the cabinet easily. 🪴
• The shelf should accommodate plants of different height. 🌴
• The build needs to be something that has personality, while not taking away from the plants. 😎

Digital Design

With this list of goals, and a desire to make something special, I came up with this initial design.

The first element to tackle was building a cabinet that was mostly open on the front, top, and sides, while still being strong enough to support the weight of heavy plant pots full of water. The key component here is the central shelf support, which connects through to the back. Despite being a massive cabinet with a fairly fine outer structure, the final design is quite rigid.

To allow the shelf to work with different plant heights, the glass shelves would be staggered. This allows plants that are taller to extend into the space of the shelf above. In the final design, as you'll see, I switched to just two glass shelves.

The sides of the shelf are open to allow air to flow freely through. This helps keep the temperature regulated, so the cabinet doesn't act as a terrarium, while still ensuring the humidity doesn't drop too quickly in the winter months. 

The final part is to keep the boys out. This is accomplished using a stylized grate on the sides, which Brubeck is helping to showcase during the installation here. These were sourced using inexpensive room dividers, though with my laser cutter I'll probably be looking to make them out of solid acrylic in the future.

The doors on the front are from lightweight acrylic, allowing the entire 4-foot-tall opening to be accessed easily (the only part in the way is the center post). They are fitted to pivot hinges with push-pop magnetic locks, making it easy to access the cabinet, even if you are holding onto a pot.

To add a little charm, I repeated the pattern from the grates by "etching" it into the acrylic using translucent vinyl. This little detail also helps keep the front of the cabinet from feeling plain, but is subtle enough to disappear if you aren't looking for it.

Function and Form Together

A big part of my philosophy in design is that form needs function, and function needs form. In this case, the function helped drive the form, and led to a more beautiful, lighter cabinet than I would have had if I had just made a shelf.

I'm extremely happy with how the cabinet turned out, and we use it every single day, whether directly by working on the plants, or indirectly by enjoying looking at them.

If you are interested in a plant shelf of your own, please contact me and let me know!