If you want to find the best display shelves for miniatures, we've got a number of recommendations for you, ideal for Warhammer miniatures and more.
Which are the best display shelves for miniatures? Or indeed, for any other collectibles that may need a new home. Getting the right shelves can be a tricky job – you want something that’s a good enough size that all your miniatures can fit comfortably, but you also want something that will look good in your home and display your cherished possessions well. Boltless Rack Shelving
To make your life a little easier, we’ve found the best display shelves around. Any of these would be ideal for your Dungeons and Dragons miniatures, the best Lego sets for adults, or your Stranger Things Funko Pops.
The best display shelves for miniatures today are:
The best display shelf for miniatures.
45MinST 5-Tier Vintage Industrial Style Bookcase specs:
Gosh, this is a gorgeous shelving unit. We’ve got a number of reasons for putting it at the top of our list. First, there’s its open-panel design. This lets you view your figures from all angles (and, of course, makes it easier for you to reach and take out just one specific miniature if you want to). Second, its shelves are over 30cm deep, so you can fit quite a lot of things on each one, with the option to admire them from all angles if it’s positioned in the middle of a room.
Although it only uses engineered wood (which is quite as durable as authentic wood), it still looks pretty great and has a pleasing organic-style finish. It has an aesthetic that would go well in living rooms and gaming rooms alike. Also, if you don’t have enough miniatures to fill its five shelves, you could just as easily use it for board game storage as well – perhaps designating certain shelves to miniatures or figures, and others to the games themselves.
Handily, it’s also been created with ease of construction in mind. If you’re a pro, you can get it put up in just half an hour or so. If you’re not (I’m not) it might take more like an hour or so, but either way, it’s not one of these shelves that is going to take you half the day to get put up.
The best budget display shelf for miniatures.
Atlantic Oskar Adjustable Media Cabinet specs:
If you’ve got a vast collection of miniatures and you want to be able to display rows upon rows of them on an inexpensive stack of uniform shelves, this is probably the best one you could go for. They’re four and a half feet tall, so even shorter gamers shouldn’t have a hard time reaching the top shelves, although extra taller gamers might find it slightly cumbersome to have to bend down – all things considered though, it’s a good, medium height build.
The shelves are deep enough to hold videogame boxes too, so if your miniature collection isn’t big enough to fill an entire stack of shelves, you could easily have a few designated miniature shelves, and then use the others for more practical storage. Perhaps you could have one shelf dedicated to all the best Dungeons and Dragons movies that you have on DVD?
The espresso color of the shelf is something that I just think goes perfectly with the aesthetic of miniatures. It’s slightly more charming and whimsical than the white color you usually get with cheaper shelves – though there’s a maple variant for anyone after a more natural wooden color.
The best heavy-duty display shelf.
Muscle Rack 5-Tier Heavy Duty Steel Shelves specs:
Have you had bad experiences with shelves bowing or breaking from the weight of your collection in the past? Or do you, perhaps, live in a property that has an issue with dampness that warps wooden furniture? Go for this Muscle Rack 5-Tier Heavy Duty Steel shelving unit and you won’t need to worry about that.
Admittedly, this has been designed with heavier products in mind, so some might consider it overkill for a display shelf. Having said that, it’s rugged steel design would go pretty darn well with a collection of Warhammer 40k Space Marines on it. Besides which, if you have any heavier collectibles that you want on display (like some of the biggest Lego sets), then this might be the ideal choice.
Each shelf is over 45cm deep, and there’s no back, so you’ve got plenty of space and an opportunity to view your collectibles from all angles. Of course, a heavy-duty shelving unit like this is going to be heavy and difficult to move, so keep that in mind if you’d like to reshuffle your gaming room from time to time. Still, when it comes to sturdiness and that industrial chic style, you can’t do better than this.
The best floating shelves for miniatures.
Loon Peak Cerasella 2 Piece Pine Solid Wood Floating Shelf specs:
Worried that you don’t have the floor space for a new shelving unit? Well, we recommend going for some stylish floating shelves to display your miniatures. That way you can fit in one of the best gaming tables and have this shelf hovering over it – ideally positioned to show off to everybody how good you are at painting miniatures.
Convenience of display shelves aside, another reason to go for these ones, in particular, is that they just look great. They’re made of solid wood and there are four different finishes for you to choose from – each one of them endlessly charming. It’s always handy to have a few options like this available because it means you can get something that will perfectly match the aesthetic of your gaming space. I love the Aged Barrel (or possibly the Jacobean) the most, but not one of them looks bad.
Unfortunately, these floating shelves are a little on the expensive side and what you’re paying for these two shelves could just as easily be spent on a complete shelving unit (although not one of the same quality). However, if you’re someone who just wants to display their most deeply cherished miniatures, perhaps just two shelves will be enough – and if money is no object, you could always be multiple sets of two.
The best display cabinet for miniatures.
Famapy Display Cabinet with Glass Doors specs:
Leaning towards a display cabinet, rather than a display case? This has a number of benefits. For one thing, if you’re admiring your miniatures through a sheet of protective glass, you don’t need to worry about them becoming dusty all the time. The most annoying thing about getting everything perfectly positioned on a display shelf is knowing that you’re going to have to rearrange it all in a week or so once a film of dust has settled on it.
At over five feet tall, this cabinet is taller than a few of the shelves that we’ve recommended here. Meanwhile, the glass doors are not obstructive – they don’t even have handles, so you don’t need to worry about walking into them (I’ve done that before). Instead, it opens by pressing down on it.
Figures aren’t always as visible inside a dark cabinet, but this setup comes with built-in lights which have three different lighting options, helping it to fit the ambiance of your gaming room perfectly. It will take longer to build (a whole afternoon, probably), but once it’s done, you’re left with something pretty special.
The best gothic display shelves for miniatures.
Large Prinz Floating Shelves specs:
Are you going for a fantastical, gothic decor in your home/gaming space? If so, these large Prinz Floating Shelves are going to suit you to a tee. Look at these things – they look like they could have been mounted in a Victorian manor house out on the moors, or even in an ancient and enchanting old castle. Either way, we’re sure that fantasy fans are going to be drawn to them.
These are solid wood, so you know that they’re durable, though that combined with the pristine design does mean that they carry a slightly larger price tag. Indeed, you could be a complete shelving unit for the price of this singular shelf. Even the other floating shelves that we recommended above are about half the price of these.
Nonetheless, perhaps you could get this in addition to a separate shelving unit or display cabinet. The other ones could be used to display the majority of your figures, while this one is saved for only the very best parts of your collection. If you’ve got enough money to splash out a bit, this would look really lovely.
Wondering how we put this list together? Well, the truth is, we’re nerds. We know what makes a good display shelf, because we’ve had to spend time picking them out for ourselves in the past, and we’ve seen a thousand gaming rooms with their own different approach to the best display shelf. Sometimes a cabinet looks superb, other times a floating shelf manages to look really classy.
We’ve covered all the bases we could think of, while only including solid, reliable products which aren’t going to fall down or start to look tacky within a year. If you need any more help with choosing the right display shelf, read the FAQs below:
Many may opt to simply place them on a shelf. Here they’ll be easy to access and on full display for everyone to see and appreciate. This is probably the most cost-effective option. Some collectors prefer to store them inside display cabinets behind glass doors.
If you opt for a choice that has a built-in lighting system, you’ll be showcasing your miniatures as if they were museum pieces. What’s more is that cabinets tend to stop them from getting dusty too (cutting down on cleaning time), but they are notably more expensive. Some people use tape or other adhesives to stick the miniatures down for added security too.
When shopping for a display shelf, you may find that there are quite a lot of them which are listed as being made of “engineered wood”. For those who don’t know, this is a type of human-made wood that is made by pressing leftover bits from other pieces of wood. It is still technically wood, but it’s not going to be as sturdy as wood that’s actually cut and carved from trees.
For more content and cultivating your gaming space, read our guide on the best Lego storage ideas.
Warehouse Steel Shelving Adam Randall Adam is the Senior Ecommerce Writer at Wargamer and has written for a number of publications throughout the last decade. From The Quacks of Quedlinberg to Escape from Atlantis (a true classic) Adam enjoys just about every board game and spends time making sure that our buying guides are sending you to the right place so that you can bulk out your collection at the best prices. Adam’s work desk has a Lego Donkey Kong on it, which is pretty cool.