Decorating with Books

Despite all the cool e-readers and tablets that have popped up in the last few years, nothing can replace a real, paper-and-cardboard book. If you look around our homes and office it's easy to see how much we love books. This can become a decorating problem -- how do you organize and store your books without bringing clutter into your space?

Sometimes the best thing to do is just embrace the different colors and sizes of your books and let them play a part in an eclectic, haphazard and lively decorating scheme, as in this photo from an anthropologie catalog:

                           You can also play around with the colors of your book spines, grouping them together by color or contrasting the brights against the more neutral. In this fun space from HouseBeautiful, a stack of colorful books really pops against this fabulous black-and-white book wallpaper!

And neutral books look great when combined with other white, tan and silver objects inside this white cupboard.

(image via TineK via decor8)

We always incorporate books in Visual Jill decorating projects -- stacked up as a perch for other objects, or placed strategically to bring just the right color to a certain spot.

Don't overlook the decorating power of a book!