Library Bookshelf Features
Books are heavy, uneven in height, and the reason you built the wall. These are the details that make a bookcase a library.
What the room needs
Library Bookshelf Features
Two things decide whether a wall of shelving looks right: whether the shelves are set to the books rather than to a standard spacing, and whether the spines are lit. Everything else is refinement on those two.
The third consideration is that nobody owns only books. A library wall that has to absorb board games, files, cables and the router needs somewhere closed to put them, which is why the base of the run matters as much as the shelving above it.
One at a time
What each one does, and what it costs you
Every item is a separate line on your drawing, so you can take one out and see exactly what comes off the price.
- Adjustable shelves on movable pins
- Pin-set shelves that re-space in seconds, because a paperback wants nine inches and an art book wants sixteen. Fixed shelving in a library is a decision you regret the first time a collection changes; adjustable costs nothing extra and never does.
- Built-in lighting
- LED strips concealed at the front edge of each shelf, or brass picture lights over the run for a more traditional room. Either way the point is the same — an unlit bookcase reads as a dark rectangle from across the room, and a lit one reads as the spines.
- Closed base cabinets
- Doors or drawers along the bottom three feet for everything that is not a book: board games, paperwork, the router, cables. It gives the wall a solid base visually and it is where the clutter goes.
- A reading nook
- A window seat or bench built into the run, usually where a window interrupts the shelving anyway. It turns an obstruction into the best seat in the room, and the space beneath it becomes drawers.
- Pop-out trays
- Small slide-out shelves set into the run at about waist height, for a cup or an open book while you are choosing. A minor detail and the one people comment on.
- Decorative backing
- Wallpaper, a deep paint colour or a panelled back behind the books. It gives the shelving depth and it stops the wall behind showing through the gaps where a run is not yet full.
- Shelf spans and sag
- Books are the heaviest thing most shelving ever holds. Beyond about thirty-two inches an unsupported shelf will bow over time, so long runs get a centre support or a thicker shelf. It is the least visible thing on this page and the one that determines whether the wall still looks right in ten years.
The full list
Everything available for this room
- Adjustable shelves on movable pins
- LED strip lighting
- Brass picture lights
- Closed base cabinets
- Base drawers
- Built-in window seat or bench
- Pop-out trays
- Decorative backing panel
- Centre supports on long spans
- Crown molding
- Base molding
- Ladder rail, where the run allows
Questions
Questions, answered
About thirty-two inches for a standard shelf carrying books. Past that we either thicken the shelf or put a centre support in, and on a long wall we would normally break the run into bays anyway — it looks better and it is structurally the right answer.
Strips light the whole shelf evenly and disappear; picture lights wash the spines and are part of the look. In a modern room, strips. In an older Toronto house with panelling and a fireplace, picture lights usually sit better. There is no reason not to use both in different parts of a run.
That is most of what we do in this room — the awkward wall is the reason people call. A window becomes a reading nook, a fireplace becomes the centre of a symmetrical run, and the scribing that makes it sit flush against an old wall is normal work.
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What Our Clients Say
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