Books As Decor Accessories

Recently I have been searching for beautiful ideas to decorate a clients vast floor to ceiling built-in bookshelf. Today it sits empty for the most part and we plan to fill it with lovely books, artwork, family pictures and stylish home accessories.

The homeowner would like to decorate the bookshelves with antique books. I found this gorgeous collection of French books available at Doxa Home that is a possibility. Biblio.com also has an incredible section of rare and antique books, but as you can imagine buying enough for a large bookshelf would cost a small fortune. So, I was thrilled to hear the gals at The Skirted Roundtable in a recent discussion on, Accessorizing - The Final Frontier found large quantities of old leather books at a low cost on eBay. I will be searching my local consignment, Goodwill and used bookstores too. Any other suggestions?

With all this commotion about books, I ran across delightful cover designs for hardback classics on the Penguin Blog UK. They are currently available at Anthropologie and here are my favorites designs:

Organizing books by color is a fun way to decorate bookshelves and add color to a room. For a simple "how to" - go here.

Do you decorate with books you have read, will read or never intend to read?

*images from Flickr