In Hong Kong, where residential space is often tight, a large collection of books can overwhelm a small apartment. There are, however, ingenious ways to store and display volumes while integrating them into your home d?cor in a stylish and seamless manner.
If you're looking to create your own library at home, custom-built shelves are usually the best option. Build up and over - doorways, windows, beds. Think unconventionally. An entire wall lined with books is a design feature in itself; the colours and textures have a visual richness of their own.
Take a bookcase as high and wide as possible to create an impressive reading corner in your home and have your contractor build shelves tailor-made for particular groupings of books - wide solid shelves at the bottom for heavier tomes, narrower shelves at the top for paperbacks.
'Customised shelving and units make the best use of space and are most easily integrated successfully into a design scheme,' says Mark le Feuvre, interior designer and director of Max Property Investment and Design (tel: 9331 9402). 'They will optimise storage solutions and add to the way the books can be displayed.'
If space is really at a premium, having a contractor build a platform bed with storage underneath - for books and music, for example - is the ultimate in upwardly mobile living.