Martha Stewart's Brilliant Home Decor Hack Uses A Vintage Kitchen Staple

Whether you want to fill an empty space above your cabinets or experiment with the cabbageware trend in your kitchen, decorative plates can help you achieve your home decor goals. If you're on the fence about decorating with dishes, take a look at what Martha Stewart has done with them at her house in Bedford, New York. Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, she hired a team of art-installation experts to mount her prized Wedgewood drabware on walls of what used to be a small dining area. Incorporating these oatmeal-hued ceramics into the space did exactly what she'd hoped: transform it into a more casual spot for group hangouts and curling up with a good book. With a bit of planning, antique floral china, brightly colored Fiestaware, or even plates you've painted yourself can upgrade a section of your own home as well.

Though Stewart's collectible Wedgewood pottery is stunning on its own, it gains another layer of beauty through careful arrangement, which leverages the power of composition and helps it tell a story. "Before hanging any of the plates, they are all arranged on the carpet," Stewart explains on The Martha Blog, noting that this process helps her determine how to group different dishes from her collection and play with the positioning of specific pieces. After all, it's much easier to move the components when they're not attached to a wall and not at risk of falling and breaking. Just in case a dish gets damaged, you may also want to read up on how to fix a chip in a ceramic plate.

Looking for more ideas for how to use plates as wall decor? Instagram has plenty of them. You can even glimpse Martha Stewart's Wedgewood drabware (and other prized plates) on her Instagram account. Once you've chosen collections of dishes to place on your walls and determined how you'd like to arrange them, treat them like the works of art they are by hanging them with care. Stewart recommends using hangers designed especially for plates. "These have springs and vinyl tips and sleeves to prevent scratches," she points out on The Martha Blog, adding that they "feature flexible brass wires to keep the plates in place." For the other hardware, the team Stewart hired to hang her Wedgewood dishes chose single-nail picture hangers.

Stewart also suggests making friends with a measuring tape, as it's a crucial tool for achieving the plate layout you've mapped out ahead of time. Take precise measurements of the plate locations as well as the gaps between different pieces of dishware before you mount anything on the wall. You could even place a piece of thin plastic or vinyl on the floor, beneath your plate collection, and mark the location of each plate as you create your composition. This might make reproducing the correct spacing on the wall a bit easier. You can hold this flat plastic blueprint against the wall and hammer nails through it to put holes in just the right spots on the wall. Then, remove the plastic and tap the nails into the holes.