If you’re looking for a way to organize your book collection, get your home straightened up or build a streamlined new study, a home library addition might be what you need. Not only do home libraries help busy families get better organized, but they also are fantastic ways to boost the resale value of your home.
There are several ways to build a home library. One route is to take a formal living room that is not in use anymore and re-purpose it. However, it’s important to be aware that not all rooms are suitable for book storage. Basements can flood, attics can be humid and cause mold to form in books, some rooms with lots of sunlight can cause books to fade.
Another route is to build an addition to your house, says Paul DeFeis, senior managing partner at Trade Mark Design & Build, based in Hawthorne, New Jersey. In this case, many people choose to build a library that is a study area for adults as well as an information center for young children.
Some people even choose to have mixed-purpose rooms, home libraries combined with other forms of media, such as digital videos, DVDs and cable all streaming to one location. According to DeFeis, this is really what the modern home library has become. And don’t be surprised: a media room can add considerable resale value to your home as it is probably one of the biggest growing sectors in the home addition arena right now, along with home theaters.
How to Do It
The road to building a home library is an easy one. It starts as an interview process, determining what the client’s needs are. Points to consider include:
- If you are a serious book collector, books will be counted and measured to make sure the quantity and weight are appropriate for the shelves. In that case, shelves are allocated according to book height and how they are referenced. It’s also important to know if you storage behind glass doors, and if you want rare books to be locked up.
- It’s important to define how many users will be in the room, and if they will want to be reading in privacy. It would be necessary to design special areas in that case, or come up with a design that will allow both individual reading areas and general ones.
- Eighty percent of what Trade Mark Design & Build does with libraries is traditional and the other 20 percent is mixed, transitional and contemporary, as that is what people want. With this in mind, information is provided on furnishing the room, from the wallpaper to the chairs. It’s crucial to make sure that all choices coordinate as well as function, like we do with kitchens.
- Sometimes we maximize use of space by building flexible ladders in tall spaces. We have had some elaborate ones where they are more than one story tall, for example, one customer had a two-story library off the master bedroom. It was more like an open floor plan for just studying, reflecting and reading.
Building a home library all comes down to what you needs and wants, and making use of the existing architecture already in place. By concentrating on the lines of the room, the moldings and the correctness of it all, you can have a library at home that is perfectly suited to you.
