Stack Your Bookshelves

Make sure your bookshelves are as interesting as the titles you've so carefully collected. Designer Charlie Birdsong develops a road map for loading them up with style

Eric Laignel, story produced by Rebecca Sowell Hawkins

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Room for More

Realize you have fewer books than you think. Clients often tell me they need vast bookshelves because they have so many books. In truth, that is rarely the case. The boxes of books they have stored away will fill only a fraction of the space.

You also don't want to be stingy with books--there is something innately sad about thin clusters of books spread around vast shelves. In this case, too many is just right.