Two years ago my husband and I started out on a very ambitious bookcase build out in our living room. You can see the before and during documented in this post but it was a total transformation for our living room. Bookcases were a natural solution for our blank living room wall because we are such big readers and have cultivated a hobby of buying and collecting stories that have made an impression.
Once the shelves were built and the forest green paint dried, we placed all our books on the shelves and realized the space was much bigger than anticipated. Since that point we've obviously collected more books, but I've also enjoyed styling out the shelves with items filled with purpose and personality and in today's post I wanted to share how I came to grips with the negative space on our shelves and how I fill in the gaps on our bookshelves.
How to Style Your Bookshelf
Call me a purist, but I believe a bookshelf's main purpose should be for displaying and housing books. You're not going to find too many tchotchkes on our shelves but it's also not the best look to have completely empty shelves on a feature wall of a main room. A few design tips for bookshelf styling I like to think about are:
- Group items into 3s to satisfy the brain. There's something our brains like about items arranged into groups of threes. Whether you're styling a coffee table, empty bookshelf, or kitchen island, a rule of threes will always look complete.
- Play around with the direction of your books. Very likely you're going to have some level of books if you have a wall or a few bookshelves. Try laying one flat and add a decorative element on top, or stacking them vertically for a bit more interest.
- Vintage books always look beautiful. The top shelf of one of our bookcases is just a full row of vintage books that we've been given from different family members over the years. You cannot go wrong with styling a few vintage books into the mix here and there.
- Scatter your non-book items throughout different shelves. Provide a good mixture of framed photos, books, trinkets, and collectables throughout the shelves so it looks cohesive. Add a row of books and use unique items as bookends such as a conch shell or framed photo.
- Paint your bookshelves a darker color if you want them to fade a bit. This might seem counterintuitive - wouldn't a bold, dark color cause them to stand out? I've actually found that while our bookshelves are a focal point of our downstairs, the shadows in the back of the dark green shelves makes the items on the shelves fade out a little bit. If you're feeling like white or light colored shelves draw too much attention to the items on the shelves, consider a darker color on the shelves themselves.
Where to Find Items for Your Bookshelves
First and foremost something as large as a bookshelf in a room should be filled with personality. Books, obviously, are a great way to tick that box, but if you're looking for other items for your shelves a few places to look are:
- Vintage Stores- the amount of items in vintage or antique stores that can be used for bookshelf styling is overwhelming. I truly believe if people had the time to search through vintage stores the decor section of Target wouldn't need to exist.
- Poshmark - You can find some amazing, affordable finds shopping secondhand online stores like Poshmark. Vintage cameras, brass bookends, beautiful picture frames are all available with a little snooping.
- Your Own Home - that small basket with no purpose? Style it on your shelf. A candle typically reserved for Christmas? Add it on top of a coffee table book for some height and dimension. You might be surprised to find items around your own home that work year round on your bookshelves.
How to Organize Your Bookshelves
This is for all my big book collection people. I see you. If you're looking to organize the books on your shelves, this section is for you. We take great care in categorizing our books by genre, but there are so many ways to organize your books:
- Organize by Genre – probably one of the most intuitive ways to organize and certainly most "library like". We read as a whole a lot of fantasy and those stories tend to stay on our shelves so most of our right bookcase is organized by fantasy and sub-genres. Series are shelved together with the top shelves being more sci-fi and magical literature descending into high fantasy epics like Wheel of Time.
- Organize by Color – this is a big one on social media. It's visually so beautiful to organize your shelves by color but I always wonder how someone finds a specific book easily?
- Organize by Author – slightly different than genre specific but still quite bookstore-like. You could start with "A" top left and wind your way down author by author.
- Organize by Book Height – the OCD specialist in me tries to get books - especially books in a series - the same height on the shelf. Sometimes for whatever reason that's just impossible, but I do know quite a few people who can't stand to have mismatched heights of books on their shelves.
