Dan's Papers - August 17, 2007

A library is a mature and masculine addition to any home. Building the perfect library in your home can be costly but it pays off by providing a quiet place to read, an educational room to explore and a unique color palette of deeper, darker shades. This room is about more than books.

A library must first have, of course, bookshelves. The bookshelves should be a dark color such as black or deep brown and they should extend across the entire wall. Depending on the size of your library and the number of books you want in it, the bookshelves could extend across more than one wall. Regardless of how layered your library is with shelves, a true study room should have bookshelves that extend vertically from the floor to the ceiling. Rumrunner in Southampton and East Hampton might have the right shelves, but I recommend perhaps crafting them yourself. Creating bookshelves takes relatively simple woodworking and creativity is an important part of any library, so try buying some old wooden boards and turning them into a giant shelf for your favorite reads. Just remember to measure the size of the wall so that the shelves fit nicely.

Before you put in your bookshelves, however, you have to cover the walls in color. White walls will not add to the serious mood of the study room. A library is one of the rare rooms where red paint will not look out of place or too bold. If not red, consider orange or navy. A bright, bold color contrasting with the deep, dark tones of the furniture will create a very interesting room. If the solid color paint is too intimidating for you, tan wallpaper will also work nicely.

Comfortable chairs are as important to a home library as books are. Get big, brown oversized, old-fashioned chairs with huge cushions and then take some tan throw pillows and toss them around. For extra reading relaxation, reclining chairs are appropriate. The chairs should look large and masculine, like the kind of chairs you would smoke cigars in, but should also be super comfortable so that you can spend hours reading in them. I recommend placing the chairs in a circular pattern, perfect for reading groups and literary discussions. In the center of the circle you could place, perhaps, a piece of furniture to rest your feet on, such as a large circular footrest or a wooden table. If you do not place the wooden table in the center, put some small wooden tables throughout the room, near the chairs, and place interesting coffee table books on them such as Hamptons Bohemia: Two Centuries of Artists and Writers on the Beach, Hamptons Pleasures, and Serge Normant's Metamorphosis. In addition to the coffee table books, place baroque ashtrays on the tables, even if your library is a nonsmoking room.

If you have a wall left unadorned by a door or a bookshelf, consider hanging the ultimate masculine interior decoration: a moose head. To be honest, I'm not even sure if this is still entirely legal, but it sure is cool. If killing a large moose and hanging its head on your wall is passé in the age of endangered species and going green, then try and find a replica of a moose head and hang it as a homage to the heyday of the manly rooms featured in old movies. The moose head will truly add character and credibility to your library.

With any other spare space, add a beautifully carved, deep brown desk. A library is not only a great place to read, but it could be the perfect quiet locale to do some of the writing you've been planning. In fact, I am writing this right now in my library, under a moose head. Inside or on top of the desk, place some cigars for the bohemian smoke break.

If you have followed all of these steps, your library will be complete, except for, of course, the most important aspect of any library: the books. Some people are sticklers and say that home libraries should be hardcover-only, but I personally have no preference, just make sure you place hardcovers with other hardcovers and paperbacks with other paperbacks. You can organize your library by author or genre. Once you fill in your shelves with books, you can look back at your library and sit back and relax with a book.