Three Quick Tips To Beautify Your Bookshelves

3

Take your bookshelves from blah to ooh-la-la with any or all of these three easy steps.

For many of us apartment dwellers, remodelling is not an option, and redecorating is too expensive. That doesn't mean you can't perk up your space with a little elbow grease and creativity! Here's a few tried and true recipes for a chic new look.

Step 1: Adorn
If the shelves on your bookcase are tall, consider painting or papering the back of each shelf to add some pop. The gold-dotted paper at above has a nice shimmer to it, but painting a light green (below), yellow, or pink will also add depth to your space and a subtle bit of personality.

Step 2: Bedeck
Break out the chotskies! If you have a box of stuff marked “Misc” from your last move, or if you have an inordinately large collection of impractically small clutches, you’re good to go. Bud vases, beach finds, and jewelry all make great additions to a bookshelf (see below), and even if you’re more of a minimalist you can have fun with chotskies (just spray them all with matte white spray paint!).

Step 3: Organize
One of the easiest, sweetest ways to jazz up your bookshelves is simply by using your books to lend some color. Organize your books in ROY G BIV order, or pepper in pops of bright hues with the white spines. Another option for the brave is to turn all your books so that the spines face inward, leaving only the whites of the pages visible. Advanced maneuver: use the whites out with a few bright spines here and there.

How do you change up the look of your pad without doing a total overhaul?

All images courtesy of LonnyMag.

2 Comments

• 

  clothesure • almost 2 years ago
  i have a weird obsession with bookshelves. im trying to figure out what to do with this super tall skinny one i got from ikea. it looks so.. bleh. anyone have tips?

• 

  Casey Kettleson • almost 2 years ago
  Love this feature - I'm always rearranging the shelves in my home as well as my bookshelf! I'm all for organizing by color - orange is my color of the moment for this. nyc lu - why don't you push your tall shelf into a corner of your room and stack your books on the side of it, creating a tall stack of them from largest to smallest? I've done this in my room and have the stack topped with a platform sandal that I lost the mate to - a casualty of a good night dancing on the LES. Use your shelf for displaying other items and keep the shelves closest to eye-level more scarce than the other ones.

Please do not fill out this field