Houstonians Are Adopting the ‘Bookshelf Wealth’ Design Trend
When a home has built-in bookshelves, interior designer Veronica Solomon of Casa Vilora Interiors urges clients to display books with objets d’art such as pottery and art.
Image: Courtesy Colleen Scott
Bookshelf niches in interior designer Jennifer Gurley’s Houston home are painted a deep, rich red to match the gold-embossed, red leather–bound books that share space with a small piece of framed art, vases, and decorative boxes.
The vignette is one of many in her and other Houston homes that live up to the buzziest new design term of 2024: “bookshelf wealth.”
It isn’t just about having plenty of books, and it isn’t really about wealth at all. It’s about having books and bookshelf décor that demonstrate the richness of our life experiences.
For this historic home in Houston, interior designer Sandy Lucas of Lucas Eilers Design Associates painted the shelves dark blue, added picture lights above, then filled shelves with beautiful books and pieces from the homeowner’s antique duck decoy collection.
Some homeowners have plenty of built-in or floating shelves while others bring in furniture—bookcases or other cabinets—to hold their reading material, collectibles, and objets d’art. But there’s more to creating beautiful bookshelves than stacking books and tossing in a few knick-knacks.
In this living room designed by Veronica Solomon of Casa Vilora Interiors, books find a home on floating shelves next to a fireplace and on top of the coffee table.
Image: Courtesy Colleen Scott
“Well curated bookshelves can make you feel like you’re getting a glimpse into the life of those who live there,” Gurley says, noting that the book titles, collections, art, and artifacts we display together tell the story, or at least a few chapters, of who we are. “I really love my entry shelves. They’re a color-block moment with red walls and red books, simple but very powerful.”
There are well-used bookshelves for the books we read day-in and day-out, but some hold the special collections of those who buy and keep hundreds or thousands of books throughout their lives.
“For every human being walking the earth, there is an interest. Everyone has a passion for something,” says Ann Becker of Becker’s Books. “Collectors are very focused on the subject they collect. Some collect just first editions; some collect any work by the same author. You know the cookbooks with plastic bindings like church groups make? There are people who just collect those. There are old mathematicians who come and buy books just to work the problems.”
Between her bookstore and private collection, Becker has at least 500,000 books on every topic imaginable, some some original tomes dating back to the eighteenth century.
Bookshelves in this study that doubles as a guest bedroom are filled with books and blue and white porcelain, designed by Veronica Solomon of Casa Vilora Interiors.
Image: Courtesy Colleen Scott
For Gurley, of Jennifer Gurley Interiors, and interior designers such as Sandy Lucas of Lucas-Eilers Design Associates and Veronica Solomon of Casa Vilora Interiors, arranging books perfectly is an art.
“The minute I look in someone’s home and see an opportunity to have a bookshelf, say a niche by a fireplace, I always want to incorporate that. I feel like everyone collects things, and I love when collections are together,” Solomon says. “For bookshelves, you should pay attention to the color. I wouldn’t say I follow a trend, but I am conscious that books come in a variety of colors, and I want to arrange them in a way that’s pleasing.”
Interior designer Sandy Lucas of Lucas Eilers Design Associates reminds that bookshelves in children’s rooms should not be overlooked.
Lucas is working on a project for a couple who have so many books that they asked for a two-story library in their new home. Solomon has a client with thousands of books, which they’re planning to have displayed on bookshelves in several rooms.
“Some of my clients read a lot and some don’t, but my philosophy is always to bring books in. I have thousands and collect them because they’re beautiful, but I don’t read them all,” Solomon says, noting that she keeps her oldest books out of direct sunlight and puts them on higher shelves so they’ll get touched less.
If you want to embark on your own bookshelf wealth project, for starters, choose between built-in shelves or bookcases that are separate pieces of furniture, or a combination of the two. Then, do you stain the wood, which finishes more quickly, or paint them, which takes weeks to dry in our humid climate? Make sure shelves are deep enough and tall enough to hold your books, especially oversized coffee table books or antique books.
In her own home, interior designer Sandy Lucas of Lucas Eilers Design Associates fills floating bookshelves in her living room with books, antique wooden boxes, and small pieces of art.
Image: Courtesy Stephen Karlisch
The back of bookshelves can be decorative, painted a complementary color—such as Gurley’s foyer niche painted Benjamin Moore’s “Regency Red”—or even wallpapered, using grasscloth to add texture or a color or pattern to add whimsy.
Then add art and other home decor. Solomon loves to include blue and white porcelain; and if her clients haven’t collected such antique pieces, reproductions at lower prices are easy to find at shops such as Home Goods or other discount stores. Greenery can be faux or real, and if you add candles, don’t burn them there or you might set the shelf above it on fire.
For a collection of old red leather-bound books, interior designer Jennifer Gurley painted the inside of a built-in bookshelf Benjamin Moore’s “Regency Red.”
Image: Courtesy Haylie Smith
Bright paint colors for bookshelves work great in children’s rooms, both Gurley and Lucas note. In one project, Lucas used a fresh, spring green for the backs of bookshelves in a children’s room. Small pieces of pottery, Lego figures, a jar of multicolored marbles and the children’s own framed artwork finished it off.
“Large coffee table books and some design books are often too tall to stand up on a bookshelf, but they look great laid on their sides. Smaller books can stand up but they don’t always fill the entire shelf and something has to hold up the last book,” Lucas says. “It creates more interest if some are standing vertically and some are laying down horizontally.”
The study in Jennifer and Jared Gurley’s home has plenty of built-in bookshelves, and these in the study are lined with books, artwork, and other collectibles.
Image: Courtesy Haylie Smith
Antique wooden boxes can work as bookends, but you can also stack small decorative items on top of them, Lucas said. Even a found bird’s nest sitting on a block of wood can work.
“Depending on the color and number of books, it can look busy,” Lucas says. “So it’s back to the principles and elements of design. You want balance and harmony between the pieces being displayed together.”
With a red-white-and-blue color scheme in her youngest son’s bedroom, interior designer Jennifer Gurley of Jennifer Gurley Interiors added red and blue books against blue-and-white striped wallpaper.
Image: Courtesy Haylie Smith
Antique stores, such as Memorial Antiques and Interiors at the Houston Design Center, are full of collections of books, small and large, and some are more current while others can be 100 years or older, Gurley says. She also likes to shop for books at the Round Top antique shows and searches for them in online auctions. “Whenever I see a nice set of books, I grab them,” she says.
If you want to fill your shelves quickly, you can try Half Price Books stores or visit the Craftex wholesale store in Bellaire.
For Becker, it’s all about savoring old-fashioned, hard-copy books.
“What I love is when you walk into someone’s home, you can read a person by what’s on their shelf. But a true collector can never read all of the books they collect. There’s not enough time,” Becker says.
