PUMP UP THE VOLUMES
They’re not just for reading — here are some ideas for decorating your space with books
Books are evolving as a decorating statement for their looks, not for their content.
Some people adore having favourite books on shelves throughout their homes as totems of their literary life or their studies.
But today, like it or not, many books are bought by the box, by the yard or by colour. Sometimes a book is only bought for its cover, or even its spine or pagetop hue.
Books can add warmth and colour to a room, and stacks of books can serve as end tables or nightstands.
Instagram and Pinterest continue to inspire DIYers with fresh ideas on decorating with books. We present a few here. BOOK ARCH
If you do a search on Instagram for #BookArch, you’ll see a charming variety of arcs in homes, book shops and libraries. They look good framing fireplaces or rounded doorways or creating interest along a wall.
Julie James, a floral artist and wedding designer, says book arches are in demand for weddings.
For a photo shoot, James bought a used book arch made of two lengthy pieces of bendable steel (rebar). A variety of hardbacks and paperbacks had two holes drilled in them and were threaded onto the arches, which were then secured into heavy bases.
“I’ve hung book pages from trees and laid out book pages under flowers and moss on tables.”
A popular centrepiece: little stacks of vintage books with a candle or small vase of flowers on top. BOOK HEADBOARD
In 2012, Kassandra Utzinger, a Vancouver graphic designer and blogger, wrote a post on her website Design Every Day (designeveryday.ca) about her bed. “I was looking for some way to decorate in a personalized way. I was inspired by seeing how Banana Republic was using books to display jewelry in their stores back then.”
She nailed second-hand books onto plywood, leaving the top pages loose. She affixed those with two-sided tape and finessed them to make it look like the pages are about to flip.
Utzinger appreciates variations on her theme. “It’s cool to
see how people put up the books and then do some painting over the pages,” she says. “I have seen various-size headboards using different-size books. In children’s rooms, sometimes they use colourful and bright picture books. It’s all really fun.”
COLOUR-CODED BOOKS
Everything at the Wing, a chain of women-only co-working spaces and social clubs, is carefully coordinated: even the bookshelves. According to Chiara de Rege, Wing ’s interior designer, books by female authors were carefully curated. A co-founder of the club, Audrey Gelman, was interested in creating a rainbow of colour on the shelves.
“Audrey had been talking about a spectrum of colour,” deRege says. “She is a total book nerd, and it was important to her that there be a library with relevant books that people would read, but that it also have a cool rainbow vibe.” They organized books on shelves in the Wing-branded Pantone colours, which are pale pink, mint, navy, burnt orange, caramel and grey.
Some books are displayed with their covers out, and some with covers off and spines out.
TINTED SPINES
There’s another way to organize books by colour: by the hue of their tinted page tops. The most popular page-top colours are blue and green, says Nancy Martin, owner of Decades of Vintage, which sells old books curated by colour, as well as rare antique books. Publisher’s stain, the technical term for tinted page tops, was applied to the page edges of certain vintage books to shield pages from later damage because of dust and dirt. “It was a cheap way to make things look fancier,” Martin says, “and gave a series of books a competitive edge.”
Shelving books with the page tops showing out is popular for nurseries, since 1950s book series such as the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew and Tom Swift have tinted tops. “Sometimes people put a few with the spines out and then put a few flat in the other direction.”
COFFEE TABLE BOOKS
Cape Cod designer Sandra Cavallo changes out the books on the coffee table to reflect the seasons. She places books in stacks and carefully arranges collections around them, giving the books space to be easily accessed.
“Grouping books by colour and size helps my layout to appear clean and simple,” says Cavallo, “but mixing vibrant, fun colours and different sizes can be a great design statement.”
She might use a round or square tray on the table to group smaller elements in different heights and materials. Play around with your vignettes, she says, and step back and take a look. If you’re not sure of the overall effect, take a quick iPhone picture. “That’s how I got started on Instagram,” says Cavallo, who now has more than 173,000 followers on her account, @ oldsilvershed.