Bookcases, What Do They Say About You?

Bookcases aren’t simply storage items. They haven’t been for quite some time in fact, perhaps even since the middle ages when furniture started to become more ornamental than simply just functional. As with a lot of contemporary furniture, the bookcase has become one of those furniture pieces that need to be carefully selected if you are to bring out the full aesthetic potential of your living room or study (or even your bedroom).

It doesn’t really matter if you pick out a traditional piece of fine oak with engravings and tiny cherubs overseeing the room, or if you pick a modern piece that has a more unusual design than one would be used to, as long as it fits with the room, which hopefully in turn fits with your personality. And that is the crux of the matter here. Bookcases say much more about your personality than a person would realise at first glance.

Positioning is one aspect. I don’t personally know anyone who sits the bookcase right in the centre of their living room; however I do have one friend with a rather elaborate home library. He has dedicated an entire room to housing his book collection and the bookcases span each of the four walls as well as a space in the middle with four bookcases back to back (two on two). It really is quite a magnificent room especially since it leads into his ‘reading room’ as well. I tell you this story with full awareness that we don’t all possess my friend’s ‘resources’, however.

It isn’t just about the furniture itself either, but also about what the bookcase contains. Bookcases nowadays aren’t just built for books, but ornaments, pictures, art work, even TVs. What you choose to display says as much about you as the bookcase itself. Again, you can go the traditional route and hold certain works that interest you or that you enjoy. You could have entertaining books on one shelf, textbooks on another, family photo albums, encyclopaedias... whatever you like. Just bear in mind that visitors will always check out your bookcase and take a look at what you have placed in such a prominent position.

Borrowing another page out of my friend’s book (pun very much intended), he is very much a traditionalist. His home is almost permanently fixed in the era 100 years previous. He doesn’t own a television or a microwave... he has upgraded the heating system though and does take advantage of a few other modern conveniences but overall, he is a renaissance man and his home decor (bookcases included) mirrors this image quite nicely. He once told me that ‘the clothes make the man, but the man makes the home’.

Putting aside the fact that his wonderful wife actually ‘makes the home’ I understood his point. He tried to put every ounce of his character into his home and honestly, has succeeded extraordinarily well. He put thought and energy into choosing every single item in that house, but more so into the library in order to reflect who he was. It wasn’t just the decor, but the books he chose to keep and the bookcases in which he chose to keep them.

By: TJM

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For bookcases in contemporary designs have a look online at Go Modern. They have such a large selection you are bound to find a bookcase no matter what you are looking for, & also have a huge range of contemporary furniture