11 Stylish Ideas For Decorating With Books
If you are a book lover or want to create a homely feel in your home, there is nothing better than decorating with books.
Books gives character and uniqueness to your space, and you can use the pretty book covers to tell a story about you, your style and your home. Nothing sparks more of a conversation piece during a get-together like a book.
On top of this decorating your home with books will help you to stick to your yearly goal of reading more. As reading is great for relaxation, exploring and growing. All contributing to a mindful interior space.
And as the first Clue in Atomic Habit says, make it obvious – and you will have a larger chance of succeeding with it. If you are wanting to read more, surround your space with beautiful books!
See my 11 stylish ideas for decorating with books below. While all of these ideas I use in our homes, number 7 is a new one on my list that I incorporated this year, and number 8 is purely my must go to idea.
1. Decor Book Vignettes
Group your books with decorative objects together to create stylish vignettes. This can be done on all sorts of furniture, like side boards, chairs and desks.
Use a layering effect where you layer a few wider books of different sizes stacked with another taller object to give height. This type of approach creates more interest to the area.
2. Floating Shelves With Decorated Books
Nothing is so pretty like floating shelves especially running across a whole wall, creating a more built-in feeling.
Depending on the depth of your shelf you can either use the shelves to decorate books in different ways: open books, stacked books, standing books etc. Or you can opt for the more traditional way of placing your books stacked vertically.
3. Dainty Book Decoration with String Shelves
Place a few of your favorite books in a string bookshelf, and voila you will have a dainty decorative book look.
Check out this Swedish brand called String Furniture if you have not yet. I recall my grandfather having one of these bookshelf in his study, that I was always admiring how nice the books looked like in it and possibly one day I own one of my own.
4. Style With Open Books
To add an extra sense of story and context to your home and style, try to decorate with opening some of your favorite books.
Maybe you have a book with a beautiful inspiring poem or passage that inspires you daily – great way to to decorate with some meaningfulness behind.
This type of style works really well in all sorts of styles but I can easily see it in the Luxury minimal design as well as the Japandi interior style.
5. Stack Books On Window Sill
Credit: BoSthlm
If you have wider window sills, which is typically seen in Scandinavian interior designs then stacking a few of your favorite books on a window sill can create a cute style.
Here I would opt for smaller books, possibly even group them by topic as to not only make it visual appealing but also practical.
Assign that stack of books to serve a purpose – maybe your go-to Sunday reads or your books around relaxation.
6. Coffee Table Books
At times over rated but still my-go-to style when I decorate living rooms, placing some cute inspiring coffee table books on the coffee table.
To collect books for coffee tables, I love randomly going to a book fair that has sales or thrifting books, as I believe this is where I find the best gems and also have the best memories around the books I pick. Especially if I am looking for larger random books that can inspire.
The type of books I am after here is not always specifically focused on interior design, but if this is your jam then I have my top Scandinavian interior design book list here that might inspire.
7. Add an Area With your Monthly Reads
A stylish yet functional way is to create an area where you store all your yearly or monthly wished reads. This can easily be achieved by having a small unit specifically for this or even using baskets decorated nicely next to a reading nook.
This idea I am using this year after reading Atomic Habit, as stated in the top of the article; in order to stick to a habit you have to make it obvious. But of course being into design, I always like to have it stylish also. This is one way of merging them both.
8. Books on Display In Kitchen
There are so many ways of incorporating books into a kitchen space whether you want to use a book stand or lean a book on a counter. Or perhaps stack a few at the edge of your counter top or use shelving systems in your island or kitchen area.
Adding a nice book that inspires your kitchen lifestyle and that is pretty can help to not only elevate your lifestyle but also the visual story in your kitchen.
Currently I am into finding great wellness kitchen books that also have pretty covers.
9. Place Books on a Ledge Wall Shelf
Styling an area with ledge shelves specifically to display your most treasured beautifully books is right up my alley. This type of style will create a great focal point in a room, and especially pretty if you have taller ceilings and can work on the height as well.
Add some cozy light to display some of those extra pretty covers in the dark and a comfortable chair and pillows and you have the perfect reading nook.
10. Books on A Bench With Decorative Objects
Stack a few decorative books on a bench and the look can give a simple yet decorative feel. I especially like this in areas where the connection to reading happens.
11. Books Styled In A Night Stand
Add some cozy vibes to your night routine by visually adding a few books that both speaks to you visually and that interests your reading habits before bed time.
This list could be much longer then 11 ideas on decorating with books since there are so many different ways to go about this.
But these are currently my 11 ideas that I will be incorporating into our new home that we will be moving into hopefully end of the year, after a 5 year build.
You can follow our house journey on Instagram as I will be posting more about the process in the coming days.
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