Making Books a Part of your Home's Design
There are many different ways to use books to add style to your home. You can stack them to create stands for displaying objects and picture frames. You can organize them on tall bookshelves by color to create neat patterns for your walls. Or you can intersperse them throughout the home to draw attention to different areas of your house. Leave your favorites out where you can pick them up again and again and use the rest as decorative objects to improve the appearance of your home.
One of my favorite ways to incorporate books in a room's design is to stack them as a stand for displaying different objects. Here we see a single stack of black books that perfectly sets off the white in both the base and the object atop the books. Multiple stacks can also be used to create display pieces of varying heights.
Books are great because they can be placed on almost any shelf space. This allows them to be scattered around the home to add different textures and colors to each area. Here we see just a handful of books but they make a statement because they are all thick and dark, matching the table and art that are also displayed in the area.
This home office shows another way to display books of a similar color together to add to the design of an area. Here we see that each row of books is matching. The colors chosen are rich dark reds, browns and blacks that accentuate the similar rich coloring of the wood and furniture here. Homes that have many collections of books, particularly reference books, may want to consider this type of display.
Here is another great example of displaying books in the kitchen. Many older houses have small built-in shelves like these which may not be suitable to storing other items but are perfect for keeping books. In this example, the books are separated by color so that you get a beautiful aesthetic effect for the area.
So many people neglect to consider the kitchen to be a good place to display books. This is unfortunate. For one thing, you certainly have cookbooks and what better place to display them than in the kitchen where you cook? Also, we can see here how easy it would be to grab a book from the shelf to enjoy over your morning coffee. Built-in bookcases in kitchens are actually a terrific idea even though they're not too common.
There are a few things that I love about the layout of the books on the shelf here. First of all, I love that some are stacked upright and some are stacked sideways because this allows you to create some great eye-catching patterns on the shelves. Secondly, I love that there is a lot of open space on the shelves which means that the bookcase looks sculptural instead of just functional. And finally, I love the bright colors of many of the books which really add to the overall appeal of the room.
Large symmetrical book displays are one of the best ways to make a statement in a room filled with books. These displays frequently flank a fireplace as seen here. The symmetry allows all of the books to come together in a clean design so that they add a nice geometric pattern to the room. Here we also see that some favorite books are stacked on the coffee table which makes this room a really appealing place to do some reading in. People who want to devote an entire room to their library should look at this type of design.
Here is another example of stacking books to display an object atop them. These books are more mistmatched in appearance but appear to be similarly themed around "love poems". I would have liked to see that theme continued in the object and even perhaps in the surrounding shelving but I like the idea of what's happening here.
Q