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The two most powerful memories I have from 11 years of being homeschooled are my reading of two timeless books: Witness by Whittaker Chambers, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

(Those book titles = my temperament showing! You can tell I’m melancholic, can’t you? And since you can tell that about me, I’m sure you appreciate the effort at perfectionist-restraint that goes into each blog post, right? Hey moms, …help your perfectionist kids: don’t let them make the perfect into the enemy of the good.)

These books resonated with me because the authors were mature versions of my own melancholic temperament. But there’s more…

When I was fourteen, I became powerfully convinced while reading Jane Eyre that one day, I, too, would marry a man 15 years older than me! 

Yep, that was my profound take-away from the classic, Jane Eyre. While I’m sure all of you homeschooling moms are rolling your eyes at the silliness of such a shallow take-away, I’m telling you that I felt this deeply because I remember it so well. (The totally irrelevant details include: I was sitting at the window seat in my room, staring out over a former field that was our front yard and beyond to the fields across the street, daydreaming about my future 15-years-older husband.)

Fast-forward to when I was 28, sharing pictures from my childhood with my fiancé (now my husband): “Here is one of me riding bikes in the front yard with my brothers.” Imagine my surprise when my David pointed out the farmers harvesting cotton in the background of the photo, in the field across the street, and said, “I’m in this picture. I remember you kids across the street.” 

My husband David, incidentally, is 14.5 years older than me. 

It’s a mystery to me whether that silly-turned-amazing impression I had while reading Jane Eyre was God letting me sense something about my future — something for my delightful surprise years later, like a little unexpected gift left in a glovebox or on a fridge shelf—or if it’s just that we tend to actually do what we hold deeply, what we envision and daydream about.

I think it is some of both, which is why it’s crucial for us as a homeschooling parents to form the moral imaginations of our children with care, giving them the very best of the Western intellectual tradition!

So while you’re contemplating what kinds of books you’re putting in your kids hands, let’s look at how to draw them to the shelves through beauty.

Beauty and books should go together, so get intentional about drawing your readers in to a visually attractive library in your home. These decorating tricks will beautify your homeschool bookcases without sacrificing any precious space.

1. Simplify or remove everything on top of the bookshelf

Sometimes have a tendency to fill empty spaces without considering whether we should, or sometimes the top of a bookcase seems like a safe place to put some more fragile things up high where little hands can’t reach. However, lots of small things up there cause visual clutter, and therefore unconscious mental anxiety (really!), and they’re distracting. It also turns the bookshelf into a non-verbal display-but-don’t-touch space, because that’s what the top of it becomes, and that can trickle on down. 

Consider these criteria for decorating the top of a homeschool bookcase:

a. If you have less than 2 feet of space between the top of your bookcase and your ceiling, leave it undecorated.

Your books are the visual focus of that bookcase space, and homeschooling families carefully invest significant money in many treasured volumes for the children, so why distract the eye away from those treasures to a $5 fake plant on top or to a busy/fussy, cluttered shelf of several small objects?

b. Homeschooling bookcase are sacred spaces, my friends. They are intellectual and cultural autobiographies of the families that live in that home. Someone once said that books are the soul of a home. They should be celebrated with beautiful and careful arrangement, not crammed, uncared for, and cluttered with cheap objects stuffed above and around them. 

c. Use large, simple objects for the top of shelves that have more than 2’ of space going up

When you have such a large space between the top of a homeschool bookcase and the ceiling that you consciously notice “all that empty space,” then it’s time to decorate!

In fact, if your room feels small, bookcases are the thing you need to use to make the room feel larger. Here’s why: small rooms with regular ceilings feel smaller and shorter with long, wide objects like sofas, couches, televisions — all those rectangles that add width. Width, width, width. What is lacking in these spaces is height — something tall and narrow. Enter the homeschool bookcases, which are perfect for this! Add height to a room by placing something large and simple on top of the bookcase, like a large basket (or three, since groups of three are pleasing to the eye). An additional benefit to this is that baskets, warm-toned natural clay jars, or anything woven will help the room relax and feel more casual.

d. If you do display a collection on top of a bookcase, connect it to the rest of the bookcase by extending it into the bookshelves.

Your collection needs to start in the bookshelves in order for the collection on the top of the bookshelf to feel connected and cohesive, instead of jarring and distracting. If you’re displaying a large relaxed whicker basket on top, incorporate several whicker baskets throughout the shelves to hold thing-spine items or sets, too. If you use my trick of collecting old jewelry boxes from thrift stores (my version of the now-expensive library catalogue decor), place a few of them inside the bookshelves and display the rest on top of the bookshelves. This extends the collection throughout the bookcase so that there is cohesiveness.

2. Arrange books to achieve a mirroring effect

This decorating trick is the easiest way to beautify your bookshelves without losing any space. To achieve this visually pleasing decor trick, imagine a line running down the middle of your bookcase, then arrange books starting in the middle and aiming for symmetry as you extend out in either direction. Before you dismiss this as one of those “attractive but useless” ideas (like the ideas I can’t stand: arranging books by color, or the incomprehensible idea of turning books backwards!?!?), take a look at your shelves and see what multi-volume sets you have. Most homeschooling families have many multivolume sets, and these can be centered on the bookshelf, with the remaining space on either side filled out with similar sized and similar subject books on either side, in descending height.

3. Add frame holders to display forward facing books without losing shelf space.

This is the only time I would consider “organizing” by color. Go ahead and pick three of your favorite books in a similar colors. Perhaps these are books that are all blues and greens. Buy some of those metal picture frame holders from the Dollar Tree, but bend the stand part outwards more, so that you can slide it inside the shelf under some books, and the other part hangs down over the shelf lip. Then put the attractive book you want to display inside the metal frame holder. Book covers are often beautiful, and designed to draw us in. With this picture frame display hack, you can rotate books to highlight weekly and achieve a wonderful interaction with your bookshelves.

4. Layer your bookcase itself with a small ottoman or footstool in front and off-centered. 

One of the best questions to ask yourself when decorating is, “What will make me (or my husband or my children or my guests) want to go over there? What will draw someone in? Very often that means some kind of seating or something cozy. Consider adding a small ottoman just to give the passerby an invitation to engage in the space — to sit down and peruse a volume or to step up on the bedside step and survey that higher shelf more comfortably. Just remember that contrast is key: since bookcases have lots of straight lines, go for a round ottoman or a footstool with curves. If your shelves are dark, go for a light upholstered ottoman. Contrast makes things stand out and adds depth perception, so that they don’t all visually collapse into a blob!

5. Add a library ladder!

There is nothing more extravagant and exciting that climbing a rolling library ladder to explore the volumes of a bookcase. Good homeschool decorating is comfortable, and a big part of comfort is ease of access. Library ladders make higher books easy to reach, they make the statement that books are just fabulous and worth investing in, and speaking of investment, they are actually not as costly as you might think, especially if you have a handy husband. Here’s an example of a library ladder for inspiration.

6. Give a child’s favorite object a home on your bookshelf.

In this case, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you need to draw your children in toward the bookshelves, give your child’s favorite toy a prominent home on the bookcase. For my 3 boys ages 5, 4, and 18 months, this means the big red combine toy would get a special space on one of my bookshelves. By making that it’s home, and by placing intriguing book covers visible and near it, they are automatically drawn in.

7. Wallpaper the back of your bookshelf with a textural paper

I’m a big fan of elevating a bookcase that lacks life with wallpaper on the inside back of the bookcase, especially for built-ins. It’s an easy look to achieve, just apply this criteria for texture and tones:

Most really used (not merely decorative) bookcases will contain many volumes of different colors and tones. As a result, adding a wallpaper to the back thats complementary instead of clashing and busy will be difficult to do outside of a natural material. My top recommendations are grasscloth, raffia, and faux wood geometric wallpapers in natural, warm tones *unless* you decorated during the recent gray trend, in which case you should definitely use a cool tone like a light shade of gray. The goal here is just to achieve the warmth and visual interest that texture adds. Here’s a teal-blue imitation-grasscloth wallpaper I like, which would go well with a room that has lots of browns, wood tones and chocolate notes.

Finally, never forget, of course, that all these external physical ways of beautifying the homeschool bookcase can’t replace the core of how we usually fall in love with books: by sharing stories with those we love. Be intentional with your read-aloud time (take my homeschool declutter challenge if you need to find more time!), and see this as one of the most important investments you can make with your kids.

Happy homeschool bookcase decorating,

PS – Let me know what you think of this in the comments below. I’ll try to produce a quick video of these to further illustrate my ideas, and if I get that done I’ll email the video link to my email list. (Join my list here).