wealth on a shelf

If this trend is ever wrong, I don’t want to be right.  “Bookshelf Wealth” has already been named 2024’s first design trend of the year.  Think books (of course) mixed with the best items you’ve picked up on your world travels. 

What’s the difference between this and any other way you’d adorn a bookcase?  The big difference is that nothing is acquired just to stay on-trend.  The truest beauty in it is that it is authentically you!  This is a space for your interests and personality to really shine.  If I were still doing an abundance of Zoom calls, you would see the bookshelf wealth trend take center stage in my background. 

The key for this aesthetic is it to look collected over time and not cluttered or staged.  There should be a feeling of intellect, sophistication, and style.  I’m confident many people can pull this off with things found in their own home.  In addition to these great tips to making this style sing, consider this: 

I love the look of color-coordinated book spines but if that was the only consideration I’d never find what I was looking for.  The solution is to group books by subject, then size, then color. For example, one row of my bookshelf houses our travel books from over the years.   Most are standing upright but a few are stacked to give interest and topped with a small globe gifted to me by one of my daughters.  All travel books in our house are in this one spot so I don’t have to go looking for them in other places just because I wanted to color-coordinate my collection.

Layering is another technique that helps add interest and breaks up the monotony of rows of spines.  Going back to my own bookshelf example, another shelf is full of business books that I want to be able to reference.  Again, organized by color, this shelf is layered with a quirky piece of artwork I picked up on vacation last year. 

I strongly recommend that you mix up the look of each shelf.  Rather than every shelf look uniform from left to right, keep some breathing room to the left on one shelf and to the right on another.  Perhaps one shelf has a grouping of beautiful found items and a small stack of autobiographies.  The next shelf could be largely your collection of historical fiction or true-crime thrillers with a single picture frame balancing one end. 

Remember, the key is “collected not cluttered” so be selective with what you choose to take center stage of your bookshelf wealth aesthetic.  If it starts to look like too much, try moving the pieces around until it works or you may need to filter out a few things to get the balance you are looking for.