Pinterest Friday: Bookshelf Inspiration

Hi everybody and welcome to the third edition of Pinterest Friday!  One Friday a month we comb our Pinterest boards to pick out our favorite spaces and design ideas.  This month, because both of us are voracious readers and book lovers, we decided to do a roundup of the dreamiest bookshelves we’ve seen.  If you’d like, you can check out previous Pinterest Fridays here.

From Katie:

Yes please!  This is such a pretty space with its tall windows and curved shelf–add a cozy chair and I’d never leave.

The varying shelf heights make this visually interesting, and I really like the way art, objects and textiles have been incorporated into these shelves (but that it’s still primarily books).

Shelves with textiles

From Domino Magazine originally, but image found here

Man, this is so amazing that I don’t even care that there doesn’t seem to be a way to reach those upper shelves.  I’d happily clamber right up the front of them if I could have this in my house.

From Mera:

When we were in London we stayed in a great flat where most of the doors had bookshelves above them.  Space was at a premium, so it was practical, but there was also something really magical about it, and it’s a modest detail that I’m really drawn to:

[I can't find a proper source for this--if anyone knows where it originated, let me know and I'll add it in--giving proper credit is important to us!]

[I can’t find a proper source for this.  If anyone knows where it originated, let me know and I’ll add it in–giving proper credit is important to us!]

Speaking of magical, I’ve got two words for you: library ladder.  Can’t you just picture yourself braving the top rung to pull out an old tome, blowing a cloud of dust off to discover a first edition, or crumbling pages filled with ancient family secrets?

And finally, I love the grand scale and architectural detail in these shelves:

Source

Source

Thanks for perusing our bookshelf pin collection!  And speaking of perusing our pins, we’ve recently combined our Pinterest accounts into one account for Red House West.  If you’re a Pinterest user, you should follow us!  Have a great weekend everyone!

5 responses on “Pinterest Friday: Bookshelf Inspiration

  1. Susan Glassow

    Thank you, reading women! At last count (although I don’t look often) we had at least ten hefty boxes of boxes in storage, a few under beds, more stacked against walls in our writing zones. The first photo gave me ideas for the space under the large bay window in the glassed in porch.

    I’m always looking for ways to display books. They mark our passages in life. “No frigate like a book,” Emily Dickinson wrote, and as I pull out a collection of poems from the early sixties, I time travel from now to then, reading a poem with new eyes and remembering the young English major reading it decades ago.

    1. k80bennett

      Books are such time machines! I’m not sure anything transports me back to childhood quite like a favorite book (the fact that I read each one upwards of 100 times so they’re more familiar to me than my own face might have something to do with it).
      Shelves would look lovely in your bay window!

    1. k80bennett

      And through the rabbit hole I go… Thanks for the link Michelle!
      As for the chair – even I might be able to restrain myself so those bookshelves could shine. Though Cameron would probably appreciate a place to sit too 🙂

  2. Carol Crump Bryner

    Great bookshelf pictures. I like all of them, but especially the little one above the doorway. I’m always amazed when I go into a person’s house where there appear to be NO bookshelves. Or no plants. “What kind of life is THAT?” I ask myself?

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