I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me the trick to decorating their bookshelves. I’ve heard, “I don’t have enough books to make it look right.” “I have too many books to display.” “I don’t know what to place and where.” Ever see those magazine or catalog photos of an amazingly decorated bookshelf and think, “How do I get my shelves to look like that?!”
Well I am here to help you take the mystery out of that decorating process with a few easy to follow rules:
1) Color coding is key – Remember ROY G BIV? It’s your friend when decorating a bookshelf. Organizing books, frames, art and knick knacks by color story is a fast and easy way to make any bookshelf look decorated.
2) Size Matters – Now that your items are broken down by color, organize by size. Scale is very important when placing your color groupings together. Taller books go on the bottom of a horizontal stack and then smaller from there. Taller books start your groupings from one bookend to the next. With objects, use a similar principle to group multiple objects together to create a variation in heights.
3) Being Odd Helps – When creating groups of objects or stacks of horizontal books, try to use odd numbers. For example, 5 books stacked horizontally from largest to smallest, bottom to top. Then to top off the stack only 1 frame that is in a vertical orientation to give the total stack height.
4) Less is more – Don’t feel like you have to jam every one of your belongings onto that shelf. Peeling the groupings down to what you truly love not only helps the overall feel of the space, but could also help you declutter some items that you have been holding on to for too long. (We all have them, even me.)
These easy rules will help take the fuss and stress out of decorating your bookshelves. Want some help? Post a photo of your design dilemma to my Facebook page @nuinteriors and I would love to give you some advice.
HAPPY DECORATING!