Do Shelves Attach to Lipped Shelf Brackets?

A common question we receive is whether shelves need to attach to lipped brackets. Well, as shelf brackets fabricators since 2015, we can answer that here! 

While shelf boards definitely attach to L brackets, they are not always needed with lipped brackets. 

For lipped brackets, such as a Z Bracket or J Bracket, the shelf board fits snugly within the front lip of the bracket. When the necessary quantity of brackets is used, the weight is distributed evenly. 

Advantages

Because of this, there are some advantages to not adding pre-drilled holes:

• Preserves the shelf board. This might be preferable so as to not damage special shelves

• Allows shelves to be moved, changed, or updated

• Drilling holes in the bracket can actually weaken the metal so fewer, carefully placed holes are optimal

Options

All that said, some shelf systems may prefer attached shelves. In that case, we suggest choosing our L brackets or requesting custom brackets. 

Also, it is possible to attach shelves by drilling through the metal bracket. To do this, we recommend using a 5/16” high speed drill bit. 

We hope this answers the question about whether attaching shelves to the bracket is necessary to create a complete shelving system.