If there’s no mantel and not much floor space, a bookshelf can carry a lot of Christmas on its own. There’s no tree to water and you can change it in an afternoon.
The difficulty is that a full bookshelf already looks busy. Add ornaments to every shelf and it just looks crowded. Most of what follows is about making room and being choosy.
Make room first
Take 20 to 30 percent of the books off each shelf before you add anything. Paperbacks, duplicates, the ones you keep meaning to donate: put them in a box in the closet until January. The gaps are where the decorations go, and the shelves look better with some space even before you start.
Then pick two colors (deep green and gold, say, or red and cream) plus a metal, and only add things in those. Your books won’t match each other, and that’s fine. If everything you add sticks to the same two colors, the spines fade into the background.
A loose rule that helps: put an odd number of things on a shelf, three or five, and stop there.
Ideas
A garland that drapes down the sides. Run a garland across the top of the bookcase and let it hang a couple of feet down each side. For a standard 6-foot-tall bookcase, a 9-foot garland (on Amazon) is about right. Two removable hooks hidden in the branches will hold it.
Fairy lights tucked behind the books. Push a strand of copper wire lights (on Amazon) deep into the shelf, behind the books, so the little lights peek out between spines and the wire disappears. One 20-foot strand covers two or three shelves of a 3-foot-wide bookcase. Hide the battery pack behind a stack and use the timer.
Books stacked flat as a stand. Lay two or three hardcovers flat, largest on the bottom, and set one large ornament or a small cluster on top. A flat stack breaks up the rows of upright spines and works best around eye level.
Three flameless candles (on Amazon). At 4, 6 and 8 inches tall, with some space around them. Keep them a few inches from the books and the garland, mostly because a candle pressed against the spines looks awkward.
A small forest of bottle-brush trees (on Amazon). Five to seven of them in different heights, tallest at the back, all on one shelf. That shelf is then finished; you don’t need anything else on it.
One holiday print. A 5x7 or 8x10 framed print leaning against the books. One per bookcase is enough.
A stocking hung from the end. If you don’t have a fireplace, a removable hook on the outside edge of the bookcase holds a stocking nicely.
A few pinecones in the gaps. Six to eight across the whole bookcase, in the awkward small spaces. A drop of cinnamon oil refreshes the smell in mid-December.
Books tied with ribbon. Bundle three to five books with wide wired ribbon (on Amazon) and a bow so they look like a wrapped present. Turn the spines inward if they clash. This works best on the top shelf.
Stand back and take something away
When you think you’re done, step back across the room. If one shelf looks crowded, remove the weakest thing on it. Shelves almost always look better with one less item.
January
Books go straight back onto the shelves. Everything else (garland on the bottom, ornaments wrapped in tissue in the middle) fits in one large tote. Label it, and next year the shelves take twenty minutes.