How to Create a Library Wall

Add the illusion of built-in bookshelves with floor to ceiling floating shelves! Read on for logistics for creating your own library wall …

My goal for this corner of the family room was to create the illusion of a built-in bookshelf–a place to store books and display collected pieces, but without having to actually foot the bill and/or build an actual custom bookcase.

Scroll down a few images to see this room right after our tenant moved out. Rather than doing a freestanding bookcase in this bare corner, I went for floating shelves that are painted the same color as the wall and ceiling to further the built-in feel.

The Inspiration

Above, this family room’s built-in bookcase with leaning ladder, designed by Cait Sourpas, was my inspiration.

The Details

I wanted the shelves to span as much of this wall as possible, in order to ground the shelves, and create more of an architectural addition. Short of ordering or building custom shelves, 60″ long white floating shelves were impossible to find, so we ended up purchasing these floating shelves from Home Depot and painting them white. We spray painted them, but you could make an argument for roller painting them as well.

Here’s the spacing visual for the floating shelves. You can also download the PDF drawing here as well. Initially, we planned to do 5 shelves, but as we started marking them out on the wall, my gut said let’s do 6. 5 shelves just left too much space in between. There’s an 11″ clearance between the shelves. If you’re hoping to store design books (often 12″ tall) you may want to space the shelves further apart.

Installation

The shelves come with instructions, so I won’t go into too much detail with installation, but essentially, you’ll want to locate your wall studs and screw the rod bracket to the wall with a cordless drill. The shelves do come with anchors (in lieu of attaching them to studs), but in order to support the weight of the books and accessories we have planned here, we decided to go big with studs.

As you can see below, we’re using a large level to mark the bracket screw locations prior to attaching the brackets.

Once the brackets were up, we did a dry fit with the shelves to make sure all looked good. Then we took them out back and spray painted the shelves and screws white.

The previous owner left this old apple picking ladder in the garage. It’s really tall and the top is quite narrow. I was excited to pull it out of the garage and bring it inside where we could enjoy it. Needless to say, we cut it down to fit in the room and coated it with poly.

At this point, it just leans on the shelves, so technically it’s a blanket ladder chic-ly styled on the library wall. Someday it’ll be fun to install a rail near the ceiling and make it a legit Beauty and the Beast sliding ladder, but for now, blanket ladder it is!

So that’s the skinny on the library wall. I hope I’ve covered all your questions. If not, drop them in comments, and we’ll rendezvous there! Thank you, as always, for stopping by!

More Family Room Projects:

• Family Room Design Plan
• DIY Floating Media Shelf
• Column Coffee Table