Books as decor and for function
I wouldn’t say I have a ton of books, but I do have a decent mix of your standard novels, and larger art books. Luckily all the colors and sizes means I can do a lot in terms of decorating shelves with them. I can’t really decorate tables with them anymore with a 1-year-old and 3-year-old.
via The Honeycomb Home
If you’re new at styling bookshelves, setting something up in a limited palette can always help. It give you less options and therefore less potential to make a mistake.
Similarly, grouping like-colors is another fail-proof way (if you like the look), to style your shelves. I do a very loose version of this. I tend to group similar colors with similar colors, ie, blues and greens, pinks and reds, etc. You can start stretching your styling muscles by sprinkling in some objects or accessories that are of a different color.
via Wonderful Engineering
Below is a successful example where books and items are displayed by “collection” . For example, a group of trays is clustered together, artbooks are all stacked horizontally, etc. I also utilize this technique when I decorate my shelves. Artbooks tend to be big and a lot of time my only choice is to stack them horizontally.
via ?
Shelf styling inspiration
via One Kings Lane
The shelves above feature an technique for decorating with books that I had never thought of before. Maybe because my shelves are rather deep and it would work better with shallow shelves. Display your books cover facing out. You can also stack shorter and smaller books in front of the larger ones. This is a nice alternative to stacking large books horizontally. Gonna put this one in my pocket…
An example by the master, Emily Henderson.
Want more shelf styling ideas?
