A Better Floating Shelf
One-Piece Solid Hardwood Floating Shelves & Mantels 
With so many choices of wooden floating shelves, how do you choose the right one? If you're looking for quality and real solid hardwood, the answer is simply product knowledge. We know our customers value durability, clean installation, and authentic wood quality.
The following information identifies key floating shelf factors that establish quality and safety. We encourage you to use this information when comparing shelf makers.
Key Customer Preferences
#1 - Sturdy Weight Capacity: The shelf bracket must support heavy items such as books and dishware without sagging or pulling out of the wall.
ZimBoards: Our heavy-duty steel brackets feature a 1.5” backplate, increasing wall contact by 50% compared to the commonly used 1” backplate. Our brackets have pre-drilled fastener holes spaced 1 inch apart, with two per wall stud, ensuring solid anchoring.
#2 - Hidden Mounting Brackets: Customers expect a seamless, floating look with heavy steel brackets completely hidden inside the shelf.
ZimBoards: Our floating shelves are thicker than most and routed, giving more room to fit and hide our HD steel bracket inside.
#3 - Real Solid Wood: Real hardwood is preferred over hollow boxes, cheap laminated particle board, or cheap stained pine.
ZimBoards: We only use one-piece solid hardwood slabs to make our shelves. We saw and dry all our wood ourselves.
#4 - Finished Appearance: Smooth sanding paired with a protective, clear finish highlights the natural grain while resisting moisture and stains.
ZimBoards: Our Catalyzed Conversion Varnish (CCV) Finish outperforms other finishes because it’s permanent and protects against scratches, watermarks, and household chemicals. CCV’s elasticity allows it to move with the wood instead of cracking, and it won’t yellow.
Genuine Pennsylvania Hardwood Beauty
We celebrate the beauty of our native Pennsylvania Hardwood. No need for exotic wood when Pennsylvania has over 100 tree species, many of them hardwood. Walnut, black cherry, white oak, and hard maple, to name a few, are all sought after and environmentally sustainable. Over 60% of Pennsylvania is covered by forestland, and it leads the country in hardwood lumber production.
We select our own logs, always looking for solid wood and unusual character. Each hardwood slab we saw is as unique as the tree it came from - what makes this wood so special is its character variations. “Character-grade” hardwood. Someone else sells painted shelves – we build functional hardwood floating shelves that double as wall art.
Your Style
You choose the shelf style that best fits your style – Live-Edge, with its raw beauty, brings organic warmth, texture, and character directly indoors. Flat-edge shelves with a wide edge showing wavy grain, mineral streaks, and color variations bring genuine natural wood tones into any space. You end up with beautifully finished floating shelves no one else has.
This is “Character Grade Hardwood”
Character grade hardwood embraces the natural beauty and unique charm of hardwood. Character grade showcases the wood’s natural variations, including knots, mineral streaks, wormholes, and color variations.
Rustic, Farmhouse, and Lodge Styles – Live-edge shelves match organic elements like exposed beams and stone. The authentic feel of variations of natural wood tones reinforces a traditional, country aesthetic.
Modern Organic and Transitional Styles – Flat-edge shelves with rich color tones and wavy grain create a visual contrast, preventing minimalist or neutral rooms from feeling sterile. The natural tones of the hardwood bridge the gap with sleek modern floating shelves and organic appeal.
Space Optimization - Floating shelves maximize vertical wall storage in compact areas – like kitchens or small bathrooms – offering utility of bulky cabinets without closing in the room.
Heavy-Duty meets Solid Hardwood Beauty
A heavy-duty wood floating shelf combines the clean, minimalist look of a concealed bracket with the rugged structural strength needed to hold substantial weight.
High Weight Capacity: Our heavy steel hidden brackets are made of ¼” cold-rolled steel with welded posts that the wood shelf slides onto. With a weight capacity of 80 pounds per wall stud, our shelves are designed for kitchen floating shelves that support heavy dishes or office floating shelves that hold books.
Sag-Resistant Stability: Our steel brackets' 1.5” backplate increases bracket-to-wall contact by 50% compared to 1” brackets used by many competing shelf makers. Additionally, our brackets with top and bottom anchoring use 2 – #10 X 3” self-tapping screws per wood wall stud that secure the shelf flush to the wall.
Quick and Easy Installation: Our heavy-duty steel brackets are one piece, eliminating the challenge of lining up cheap, multi-component bracket systems to fit a shelf. Installation is easy and typically requires less than 15 minutes. Larger shelves may require 2 people to install.
Clean, Modern Aesthetic: Our hardware is completely concealed inside the wood shelf, creating a seamless “floating” appearance without chunky, visible metal or wooden brackets getting in the way.
Matching Shelves
Each log we saw is unique, with its own distinct color and character variations. When we saw a log, we keep its wood slabs together throughout the entire drying process and up to use. This allows us to match multiple shelves with distinct color/grain variations.
Shelf Thickness
Shelf thickness affects appearance, durability, and the size of the bracket that fits inside.
We make the thickest solid wood floating shelves available for a reason. Our 2.25” shelf thickness gives our shelves a bold look with a wider edge revealing more natural wood tones, which matters when the shelf is mounted at eye level. But most importantly, the thicker wood shelf gives us more room to fit a stronger, more robust bracket inside.
Most makers only have access to thinner wood and are limited to making floating shelves at 1.75” thick, and that restricts them to using brackets with a 1” backplate. Our thicker shelves allow us to fit a more robust 1.5” hidden bracket inside the shelf, increasing wall contact with the bracket by 50%.
The Finish Makes the Shelf
You can use the most beautiful wood you can find, and if the finish applied doesn’t protect the wood and enhance its beauty…what good is it? Many types of wood finishes exist. Oil-based finishes like linseed, tung, or specialized hard-wax oils, when cured, leave a natural, tactile wood-grain texture with a flat, ultra-matte finish, and they will eventually wear down over time. Oil-based polyurethane/varnish provides lasting protection by leaving a plastic-like layer on the wood's surface, but is susceptible to scratches and watermarks, and can fade from UV exposure in sunlight.
The best fine furniture finish? A quick online search will show that the most durable wood finish is a two-part Catalyzed Conversion Varnish (CCV) finish. CCV is a 2-part finish and can only be applied professionally because it requires precise mixing of the hardener and dries quickly. This build-up finish has 40-60% solids and lays on the wood's surface, sealing and protecting it. CCV resists scratches, moisture, heat, and household chemicals better than standard lacquers.
CCV dries crystal clear, accentuating wood grain and color while resisting yellowing. Additionally, CCV keeps a slight elasticity, which allows it to move with the wood as it expands and contracts with humidity – it won’t crack.
CCV is available in 3 sheens: Matte, Satin, and Gloss, with Satin being the most popular.
Custom Sizes
We build 90% of the shelves to the customer's specific measurements. We build our floating shelves from 20”W to 80”W and up to 12”D, with measurements in between. These shelves ship UPS. Larger shelves up to 144”W ship LTL Common Carrier/Freight.
For more information or assistance, please contact stephen@zimboards.com