Numpty question of the day- wall shelves

[Aworryingtrend]

I am looking at getting some wall shelves and I like the floating kind. How do they attach to the wall though? The ones i am looking at on Ikea's website just says "use the fittings most suited to your walls- not included".

TIA

Fittings refers to the plugs and screws that you would use on your wall type, e.g. plasterboard, solid etc

In terms of the shelf structure, they usually have a metal insert with prongs on it that you screw to the wall first and slide the shelf onto it - the shelf has holes in the back that fits on the prongs

I've got some from Homebase and they attach using a metal bracket on the wall. You have a flat plate that bolts to the wall with two metal rods sticking out of it. The shelf slides onto these rods. I suspect the Ikea shelf comes with this bracket but you need to provide the screws and wall plugs to attach it to the wall. That's no big deal as I almost always throw away the ones that come with shelves and use better ones.

Be warned though - if you have older walls floating shelves might not be secure enough. My house is 100 years+ and I didn't realise this, but the fittings just don't go deep into the wall enough and the plaster is crap, so my shelf fell off I ended up having to buy brackets to fix them.

That's why I use better fixings...

Thanks everyone, that makes sense. Yes we have tons of screws and wall plugs so that won't be a problem.

Ah BertieBotts - you can still have floating shelves - what you need to do is buy yourself a very large gun of No More Nails. Fill the botched holes where your shelves fell out of and create a big squidge of No More Nail behind the plasterboard. Leave to dry for 48 hours THEN put the shelf up again securing it into the No More Nails

I'm sure this is not how you are supposed to do it but have dispared at our Victorian house ever having proper paintings/shelves/mirrors etc without this technique!

Northerngirl They seem safe-ish. For now. It's rented though. If it was my own house I'd probably just re-plaster it. Every single wall is covered with either woodchip (including a ceiling! ) or horrible textured wallpaper which has been painted over so many times all the joins have gone crispy.

I always wanted to know this but was too (blush) to ask! Thank you OP!!

...and dont know how to add smileys properly either....