How to Style Your Bookshelves, According to the Experts

Shelves full of books can make a space—but they’re also one of the most notoriously tricky elements of a room to get right. Whether you’re aiming for minimal and airy or cluttered yet collected (an English magpie’s dream), balancing the just-so elements of a bookshelf (to place books horizontally or vertically? Objets or non?) can make any home design enthusiast second-guess themselves.

Even top interior designers need some help making bookshelves feel layered, lived-in, and camera-ready, which is where interior stylists come in. We sat down with two of the top talents in the industry to get their personal tips for arranging books, and the objects that mix well with them.

Play with scale

The three most important factors to keep in mind when styling bookshelves are variety, balance, and breathing room, says Lucy Bamman, former editor at Veranda and House Beautiful and now an interiors stylist and creative consultant. And scale—the all-important word in interior design—is also key, says Anthony Amiano, interiors stylist for AD100 designers and architects around the globe.

“Introducing a variety of scales will add interest, but also will create a varied visual experience. Larger gestures will be apparent upon first glance, whereas smaller moments create elements of surprise and delight for careful, up-close looking,” Amiano says. For example, an oversized vessel can be a way to grab attention in a larger “dead space,” while a small framed oil painting leaning against a stack of books creates an intriguing vignette.

Keep a rhythm

Breaking up books and collections with unexpected objects—whether artwork or ceramics or personal mementos—brings nice texture to a library. The mix of objects plus books helps shelves feel balanced even if they aren’t symmetrical, says Amiano. Think about utilizing accessories you might not necessarily think could go alongside books, such as small personal artwork, large and small ceramics and candlesticks, and even beautiful boxes, which come in a variety of finishes (bone inlay, woven jute, shell appliqué), to add an abundance of texture to incorporate amongst the visual “flatness” of the books.

Play with negative space (or don’t)

Negative space is a key element that every stylist speaks about. Leaving some “air in your shelves”, as Amiano puts it, allows an exciting paint color behind the shelf, or an unexpected paper lining to the bookcase, to pop. Overstuffing your shelves, conversely, “lets your books read as one wall of rich texture.” Neither is necessarily right, he says, but “it’s about knowing what you want to highlight. Leaving air around a prized possession might really let it shine, whereas an overstuffed library might add a rich layer of texture to an overall room.”

Start from scratch

In terms of the process of setting up bookshelves, while every stylist has their own suggestions, almost all start the same way: clear everything off, and then build back with a clean slate, says Bamman. If starting from scratch, it’s helpful “to see the blank canvas and build from there,” says Amiano. Sometimes, he says, you can start with what fits and work backwards—overscaled books might only fit lying down, or on a lower and taller shelf, for example. Alternately, “Sometimes it’s more impactful to edit than to add.”

Removing everything at once allows you to see what meshes best together with a clear eye, and eliminate objects and books that might not flow with your new scheme. Like a jigsaw puzzle, putting your items back one by one in a new combination will reveal where you might be able to scratch certain items that might not work with your color scheme, symmetry, or sizing. In either case, identify some anchors—the books or objects you want to highlight—“to ground everything,” Amiano says.

Keep things real

If there’s one thing a good interior stylist won’t do, it’s forcing something that doesn’t feel right. “Let things be casual and imperfect,” Amiano says. He suggests letting some books lean, rather than keeping them all perfectly straight. The idea is for the shelf to not look overly curated, or like a retail display. “Don’t be too precious about things. Take them down and use them!” If you’re utilizing your bookshelves as a library (and we hope you are!), let that show. Putting books back in different spots as they’re read to break up the color palette in new ways shows that it’s a living, breathing library, not an untouchable exhibit. Bamman agrees: “Rules are meant to be broken when styling,” she says. (Though she does typically avoid arranging by color, but never say never.)

“There are no hard and fast rules of what you can or can’t do on your shelves,” Amiano says. “The best interiors reflect the person who lives there, so of course they evolve and change over time. Your home is first and foremost for living. Display things you love that reflect how you want to live. Read the books!”

Consider context

A sense of place is also important to keep in mind; where are the shelves living in your home? Small spaces might do double duty, says Amiano. “I’ve worked in some homes where the bookshelves are in the dining room. In that case, it might make sense to display some favorite serving pieces on the shelves rather than keeping them squirreled away.”

If you fancy yourself a minimalist rather than a magpie, a harmonious balance of shapes and textures will create visual intrigue without taxing the eye, says Bamman: “Introduce texture variance instead of color.” Amiano agrees, and posits that different interiors call for different approaches. “If your home is minimal, your approach may be more thoughtful and spare. If you’re a maximalist, I love an overstuffed look replete with trinkets and treasures. That said, good design is about the unexpected. If it’s personal and important to you, you can never go wrong.”

At home, both Bamman and Amiano have a varied approach to styling their own bookshelves and collections. Bamman’s books are admittedly everywhere: ”teetering on shelves, piled on and under tables, even stacked in my fireplace!” Amiano is always adding to his shelves, and the books are in a constant rotation. “I often reference books that might inspire me at a particular moment and can almost never manage to put them back in the same space I found them.”

Anything can be a shelf

Lastly, books don’t have to always be on shelves; you can create curated storage and display moments on most surfaces of your home, says Amiano. Bamman suggests that etageres are typically more interesting and inspiring pieces to build upon. She also recommends large pedestal tables in an entryway or library tables for displaying books.

Adding visual weight to smaller objects by grouping them together on a “stage,” like a large book, tray, or dish, as Amiano suggests, and giving them a place to shine so they don’t get lost, is a great tip for styling in general—not just for bookshelves. “I like to cluster collections of things. Grouping similar items gives them a greater sense of importance,” says Amiano. “For me, that’s part of the joy. I delight in mixing my books, objets, and art in new groupings and seeing them in new ways.”