Not weird at all, and frequently the better answer. How to mount 9 piece shelf set arrangements is mostly a question of whether one wall can carry nine modules without looking crowded — and most walls cannot.
A set is a bag of parts, not a fixed layout. Nothing about it requires every piece to live in the same room.
The Houseland nine-piece set is six hexagons and three straight ledges, which divides into two complete-looking groups more neatly than most sets do.
How to mount 9 piece shelf set groups: one wall or two
Start with the wall rather than the set. Measure the clear width, subtract a margin at each end, and lay out modules with consistent gaps until they no longer fit.
Nine modules with sensible gaps is a large arrangement — on most walls it will either look crowded or force the gaps down until the group reads as a solid block.
Six on the main wall and three elsewhere is the split that usually works, because both numbers make a coherent group on their own.
Five and four also works. Seven and two rarely does, because two modules alone read as leftovers rather than as a pair.
Splitting so each group looks complete
- Give each group at least one of each shape. A group of only hexagons and a group of only ledges look like halves of something.
- Give each group a size range. Three hexagons all the same width read as a diagram; mixed widths read as an arrangement.
- Keep the gaps identical in both rooms, so the two groups are recognisably related.
- Repeat one styling element — the same ceramic colour, the same wood tone — across both.
- Make each group an odd number where you can. Three, five and seven arrange more easily than four, six and eight.
The aim is two arrangements that would each look deliberate if seen alone, not one arrangement and its remainder.
Which rooms suit which modules
Hexagons want a wall with space around them, since the shape is the feature. A living room or a stairwell.
Straight ledges suit places where things get put down or leaned: a hallway, above a desk, beside a bed.
So a natural split is hexagons in the room people sit in and ledges where they pass through.
Consider light too. A dark module in a dim hallway disappears; on a bright wall it reads as a strong outline. Where the two rooms differ a lot in light, put the bolder shapes where they will be seen.
The Houseland set gives you two of each hexagon width, which makes the split unusually clean: one of each size in each room, and both groups end up with the same range of scale rather than one room getting all the large pieces and the other all the small ones. That is the detail that stops a split set looking like a set that ran out.
From the shop
Black Wall Shelves, 9-Piece Matte Black Pine Hexagon and Ledge Set
A 9-piece matte black set over pine: six hexagons, two each at 13.8, 11.8 and 9.8 in wide, and three straight ledges of 19.7 in. 3.5 in deep with 0.6 in board, keyhole hangers, up to 5 kg (11 lb) per piece.
See the productKeeping the two groups related
Two arrangements in two rooms do not have to match, but they should look like they came from the same house.
The finish does most of that automatically, since every module is the same colour and material.
What breaks it is inconsistent spacing and inconsistent styling. A tightly packed group in one room and a sparse one in another read as unrelated even though the modules are identical.
Where the rooms are visible from each other — a hallway and the room off it — treat the two groups as one composition and keep the alignment logic the same. Where they are not, more freedom is fine.
Sightlines are the practical test. Stand in the doorway between the two rooms and look at both groups at once. If you can see them together, they are one composition and the alignments should agree; if you cannot, each group only has to answer to its own wall. Most people discover the answer is somewhere in between, which usually means matching the heights and letting the layouts differ.
Buying more, or holding pieces back
Holding two modules back is a legitimate plan. They cost nothing to store, they match the ones on the wall, and they let a layout change without another purchase.
Buying a second set later is the version that does not work as well: a matte black finish is consistent enough between batches, but pine deepens with light and later modules start paler.
Which is an argument for splitting one set across two rooms rather than buying two sets to fill both fully — the same reasoning as in buying a set that matches.
And a wall with fewer modules and more space almost always looks better than one filled to the edges.
Hanging two groups in one afternoon
Do all the marking first, then all the drilling, then all the hanging. Switching between tasks is what makes a two-room job take a day.
Use one drawn line per group rather than measuring from module to module, so neither group drifts.
Take the tape templates from each module as you go and label them, since they are what makes rehanging simple later.
And check the wall type in each room before starting. Two rooms in the same house often have different walls — a stud partition in one and masonry in another — and the anchors are not interchangeable. Finding studs and choosing anchors covers that.
Budget an hour more than you expect. Two rooms means two sets of dust sheets, two clean-ups and two rounds of standing back to look, and the second group is always hung when you are already tired — which is exactly when a line gets eyeballed instead of drawn.
When to keep all nine together
There is a case for it: a large blank wall in a room with high ceilings, where nine modules can spread and still leave a margin.
Stairwell walls are the other one, since the diagonal gives a group somewhere to run.
In both cases the group needs a boundary. Draw an imaginary rectangle around it and keep every module inside — a nine-module arrangement without an outer edge looks like it grew rather than being planned.
And leave at least two modules empty. At that size, filled modules stop being individual and become a texture, which is when a wall starts to look like storage.
What I would do
Six on the main wall, three somewhere they will be seen daily — a hallway or above a desk.
Same gaps in both rooms, one shared styling element, and each group with a mix of shapes and sizes.
And I would hold nothing back only if both walls are already decided. Otherwise keep two modules in a cupboard: the layout you settle on after a month is rarely the one you drew on the first evening.