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Innovative Interiors

Building Your Custom Bookshelf

Readers of all types inhabit our homes – avid novel readers with the latest bestsellers piled by their bedsides, cookbook collectors with well-thumbed favourites taking up bench space, home office dwellers with reference material sliding off desks, and children leaving trails of bright picture books and school-issued textbooks scattered around the house.


Books are both practical and precious and deserve good storage. It’s often hard to find the right size, shape, or design of free-standing bookshelf to suit your home and requirements, so built-in options can be a practical and stylish solution for getting books up off benches, desks, and floors.


Built-in shelving is a permanent solution, so if you choose to install custom bookshelves in your home, it is essential to carefully consider the placement, construction, and design elements so the end product will meet your needs and look stunning.



Location, Location, Location

While your living area or office might seem like the obvious place for custom bookshelves, it pays to keep your mind open and consider all areas of your home that might be suitable for custom shelving.


If you stick to traditional areas like the living room, family room, or office, consider constructing shelving around feature items in the room such as windows and fireplaces, or include your TV set up in your solution to maximise the use of space.


Floor-to-wall shelving can cleverly divide large spaces into smaller rooms, giving you options to reconfigure your existing space while providing storage options.


Under-utilised areas such as recesses in your entrance or hallway, below-stair spaces, unused corners in playrooms, and other unique nooks and crannies also have the potential to be transitioned into customised bookshelves if you think creatively.


Think Beyond the Shelf

Bookshelves don’t have to be simple straight shelves, and in fact, they don’t just have to hold books! Your bookshelves can be a mixture of closed-door cabinets, entertainment centre compartments, drawers, and traditional open shelving.


Think about the room you are building in and other items you might like to store – for example, in a kitchen or dining area, the base of your bookshelf could be made up of cupboards to hold serving dishes or include a built-in drinks cabinet.


In the living room and office, you may choose to incorporate television, AV, or other electronics, so drawers with charging ports, hidden power points, and even a built-in desk may also be considerations in your design.


When it comes to open shelving, drawers, and cupboards, ensure you have options for height and depth so you can fit different types of books, records, DVDs, or any other items you might wish to have on display.


Sleek and Simple or Stand Out Style

There are many options for the materials, colour pallet, lighting, and accessories that you use in your custom design, so you can choose to keep it simple or go all out and make the shelving a feature in its own right!


Stick to muted colours, sleek lines, and minimal adornments and accessories if you’d prefer your shelving to blend into the walls of your home. Often floor to ceiling options or tucking shelving into recesses and compartments help keep the storage options subtle and unobtrusive, as do even linear shelving configurations.


For a bolder statement, use timber feature shelves, mouldings, trims, bright colours, metal cabinet handles, feature lighting, and try offset or unusual shelving configurations.

Rest assured – whether you choose a subtle option to house your favourite books tidily or a bold room divider showcasing your collectible items, a quality customised built-in bookshelf is a stylish and practical investment for your home.


At Innovative Interiors, our designers work closely with our customers and our team of artisan joiners to come up with creative, beautiful, and practical storage solutions to suit your space and budget. Please have a chat with our team about designing a bespoke book storage solution to suit your needs.

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