Best Living Room Bookcase Ideas For A Harmonious Home

Whether you are a voracious reader or simply need bookcase ideas to keep homework and reference books off the kitchen table, a well-considered bookcase can bring order and a visual focus to even a small space. Taken to the next level, a bookshelf can become a stunning piece of furniture in its own right, by far transcending the standard workhorse white shelves. For some enlightening ideas on how to use bookshelves or bookcases to accent your décor and restore order, read on.

Why stop at shelves? This bookcase, with handy under-seat drawers for cosy blankets to use whilst enjoying those books on the window seat, is a bookworms’ dream. It’s the ideal way to take a dull part of a room and make it an enclosed world. By adding in elegant white wooden shutters and low doors to house less attractive clutter, a once plain room will become a house favourite.

For those blessed with high ceilings, a tall shelving unit can add an imposing elegance and give the room’s height a purpose. Although a white bookcase would add a fresh plantation house-style feel, the black shallow bookcase gives this plain design a contemporary, Eastern feel. Leaving the back wall the same colour as the rest of the room makes the lines of the shelving a striking graphic detail.

Wall mounted bookshelves can release floor space and break up long expanses of wall that might otherwise flatten a scheme. For a truly modern bookcase curate the items artfully in colour, shape or tone; or a combination of all three. Turn the spines of these books to the wall so that a variation of parchment shades create a calm, vintage-feeling effect. This works especially well on a storage cube bookcase, creating a pleasing juxtaposition of modernity and classicism.

If you want wall bookshelves that won’t dominate the room, then use wooden shelving units painted the same colour as the rest of the wall, allowing them to recede into the space. This way the colour of books pops, making them seem like objet d’art, in the same way the album covers become objects when displayed. For a cost-effective solution, if a fully bespoke version is beyond your budget, then even a cheap bookcase painted in the same hue as the rest of the room will still have a similar effect.