Decorating with Books by Color
What a hot trend right now; using old books, by color to decorate in your home. I love books, old and new. The publishing industry will never die as long as I am around. I am a sucker for old books at antique stores and flea markets. I normally collect topics that I love such as history, classical literature, biographies, art history, etc. However, as I rummaged through flea markets last week, I realized that just collecting books by color, can become like a treasure hunt.
I got on Etsy to see what other collectors were doing and I checked out Pinterest and couldn’t believe all the amazing and colorful books that people were collecting, buying, and displaying. When watching HGTV shows, I noticed that a few of the decorators would use old books to decorate, some very bland while others added pops of color. So, this sent me on a treasure hunt for old books.
Paying $4 or $5 a book is kind of pricey unless it is a very interesting book or a very interesting color that is hard to find. What I have noticed is that a lot of old books are cream colored (or have faded to this color due to years of direct sunlight or harsh light hitting them for long periods of time), brown in color, which isn’t always fun to decorate with but can be useful; and navy blue in color which there are tons of books in this deep shades of blue. Finding other colors has become more challenging and the brighter the color I am looking for, the harder it is to find.
Children’s’ books tend to be more colorful. Digging through books at flea markets, rummage sales, library books sales, etc. has helped me grow a small collections of books which I have used to decorate and had color to my grey/white house. Check out some of the pictures to see how they are displayed and the different colors of books that I have came across.
A few other tips when displaying or decorating with books:
• Collect by color and season, then you can use certain colors at certain times of the year.
• Rotate the books/colors to easily change up décor.
• Books are a great item to help add height in places where you need taller objects.
• They are great conversation pieces; people see the colors and then read the titles which usually makes them ask questions about the books.
• A majority of the more colorful books I have found tend to be children’s books and small college sets of books such as Shakespeare’s or sets of literary classics.
• Looking for old colorful kids’ books is fun and they can be used in nursery’s, kid’s bedrooms, craft rooms, homework spaces, etc. My one son loves trains, so I look for vintage or old train books to put on display in his room.
• If just using for display, don’t pay more than $3-$5 per books. You can find them cheap but the topics might not be what you are looking for but if just looking for color, then buy cheap.
• Stack by largest to smallest as to follow eyesight from top down or bottom up.
If you have old family books or old school books that belonged to your parents or grandparents, dig those out and add them to your collection or display. What a great way to display a family heirloom that is meaningful, interesting and also serves a purpose.
Happy book hunting!
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