Wall Mounted Book Shelves
Wall mounted book shelves which allow books to be displayed with the covers facing outwards are often known as rain-gutter book shelves.
They look great in a playroom or children's bedroom and make it easy for children to find their books. But that's only part of the story. There's actually strong research to show that displaying books this way actually encourages children to read more often.
Wondering how this works? Read on!
Most of us (and most libraries) store our books with the spines facing outwards. This is pretty efficient in terms of space and it's fine for adult books but it doesn't work so well for children's books.
It's the cover of a book that attracts a child's attention and makes him want to pick it up so it makes sense to display your children's books with the covers facing outwards, like they are in the photo on the left.
If you're handy you can, of course, design your own wall mounted book shelves. If, like me, you aren't quite so handy, fear not because there are a couple of brilliant, cheap and super-easy short cuts.
If you're looking for inspiration, on this page you'll find photos of three different types of wall-mounted book shelves. There are also links to tutorials which explain how to install them.
And if you're keen to raise a reader but are wondering whether all this is really worth the effort, take a look at the research which explains how rain-gutter book shelves in classrooms and bedrooms have encouraged kids of all ages to read more [1].
Rain Gutter Book Shelves
These cheap timber spice racks work perfectly as rain-gutter book shelves. You can leave them as is or paint them any colour you like.
Note that these shelves have been placed at the little girl's eye-level so she can reach them. This is really important because the whole point of rain-gutter book shelves is that the books are available to your child at all times.
In order to read or look at books, kids need to first be able to see them and second be able to reach them all by themselves.
This mum created a gorgeous bedroom for her son and re-purposed some old pallets to make these wall-mounted book shelves.
Don't they look great?
Again, these are mounted low on the wall so the owner of the books can reach them easily.
I really love this.
How great are these shelves?
Note how they go around the corner. That's one of the awesome things about rain-gutter book shelves: they can be cut to fit around the corners of a room for a seamless look.
Wall-mounted book shelves that go up to the ceiling like these ones look great but remember to rotate the books regularly.
Click on the image for the DIY instructions.
[1] http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/oliver.html
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