Bay Window Shelf Decorating Ideas

Before we bought our current home, we looked at tons of houses – the abode we were selling was on the market for 18 months, so we had plenty of time. We live in an area where standard colonials are aplenty, and saw many houses with the exact same floor plan. One of the selling features of this one was the beautiful natural light, particularly in the living room and dining room which have 3 bay windows between them.

Without a doubt the windows make the rooms feel bigger compared to similar homes without bays.

However, it turns out this feature that we loved about our house is also one of my greatest design challenges. Plainly put, bay windows can be a huge pain in the butt. A while back I wrote a post on different ways to dress a bay window.

For all of you who are in the same boat as me, today let's talk about what to do with the window sill of a bay. If you're lucky, your sill is low enough to add a cushion and pillows and call it a window seat. BAM. Done.

However, if your bay is like mine, the sill is so high that it makes sitting a little awkward. My bay window sills are the about the height of a sofa table.

This is what our windows looked like when we first moved here before I primed and painted right over that gorgeous peachy pink tile and orange trim.

Here is the living room bay this past Christmas. (It's in desperate need of new lamps but I'm having a hard time committing to any.)

I don't do much with the bays in the dining room, but this one behind the couch just begs for a little vignette, especially during the winter when the garden is not in bloom. Today I'm changing this space up for spring and thought I'd share with you some inspirations for decorating this awkward space.

One thing is for sure about Pottery Barn: their stylists are masters. Since moving here and contending with my windows, I've noticed that PB is keen on a couch placed in front of a window, with a well styled sofa table in between.

Notice the PB stylists vary the height of objects and often use fresh greens or flowering branches in their displays.