Book smart

Lap of honour

Every cloud has a silver lining, and in the case of the global pandemic it’s the unexpected reading boom that swept the nation. And with books – real ones with spines, covers and pages – very much back in vogue, our thoughts are now turning to how we should display our prized volumes.

For many, converting a room, or part of a room, into a library has become a pressing aspiration. Over the past year, interior design firms such as David Collins Studio, creators of opulent spaces for the likes of Claridge’s and Harrods, have seen a rise in requests for dedicated reading zones. “We’ve gone from being asked to dress a room with a few decorative coffee-table volumes to accommodating sizeable book collections,” says Simon Rawlings, the studio’s creative director. “Now that we live in a digital age and you can read and look at images anywhere, having a space with all your books together has become so much more important to our residential clients. People increasingly want to build something really special – a place where they can totally immerse themselves in the world of print.”

If you’re lucky enough to own both a large book collection and a house with ample square footage, the ultimate dream, of course, is a double-height library equipped with ladders on rails. But even more modest variations have certain basic requirements: a quiet location, good lighting and comfortable seating, whether it’s an antique chaise longue or a slouchy armchair by a window in which to read, daydream and doze.

Before you embark on your home library project, it’s important to decide what kind of mood you want to achieve, from classic mahogany-lined haven to sleek modernist space, complete with Eames Lounge Chair and Vitsoe shelving system. And when filling those shelves, remember to leave some spaces – it’s important to let the room breathe by breaking up the serried ranks of spines with interesting objets. Rawlings also has strong views on lights. “I would avoid integrated lighting in the shelving,” he warns. “Keep it simple. Ideally you should light from the ceiling, half a metre away from the shelves, so you can skim the spines of all the books and easily find what you’re looking for.”

When space is an issue, dual-use rooms are a clever way to accommodate your treasured tomes, with some bibliophiles choosing to line their dining rooms with bookshelves or create a cosy, book-filled snug-cum-sitting room. A home library is also a place to display your passions, says Rawlings: “We’ve had a few clients who wanted to combine their book collection with their wine store. It’s also a great place to house your vinyl records. And we’re often asked to install a bar, so it becomes a room for entertaining as well as escape.”

For Nicky Dunne, chairman of bookshop Heywood Hill, the urge to create a library is about “reflecting your interests, your psyche, the innermost aspects of your personality”. For more than 80 years, this Mayfair institution has helped book-lovers assemble their ultimate collections. Today, Dunne’s team curates about 25 private libraries every year. Recent compilations have included the 300 novels every intelligent teenager should read, a series of tomes recounting the story of modernism, and a bucket-list library containing every good book you should read before you die.

When asked to sum up what inspires someone to create a library, Dunne replies: “Curiosity – a profound interest in the world. But what all our clients have in common is a reverence for the printed word, and for the incomparable company that books provide.”

From cosy reading corners to lofty double-height spaces, home libraries have never been more coveted. Read on for our guide to showcasing your treasured tomes

Words by Damon Syson