Easy Book Ledges

Gretchen
by Gretchen
We added these simple Ikea book ledges to my son's room, and they've been great! I love that he can see all the book covers so he can easily find the one he wants and I also love how it acts as a constantly changing wall of art for his room with all those colorful illustrations. As a bonus, it was a super easy and inexpensive project.
It would have been a pretty easy DIY project to build the ledges ourselves, but we opted to just buy Ribba picture ledges from Ikea instead because we had a lot of other projects going on and wanted to save a little time. I'm not sure buying the wood to make the ledges ourselves would have been any cheaper than the Ikea ledges anyway.
We made sure to attach the ledges by screwing directly into the studs. They look a little too much like a ladder to toddler eyes, so we wanted to make sure they'd hold up to any climbing that might happen when we weren't looking. And we decided on the spacing based on my son's tallest book at the time, "I am a little elephant" icon
All filled up with books! We've since repainted and redecorated his room, but the book ledges have stayed. You can see his new room and the book ledges with preschool books instead of toddler books here.
Gretchen
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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  • Laura Laura on Apr 12, 2017

    How much do the shelves cost?

  • CecileH CecileH on Oct 25, 2017

    I really love this idea, but what I want to know is, where did you get the books "I'm a Little Elephant", "I'm a Little Tiger", I'm a Little Alligator"?

  • Shantel Dixon Watson Shantel Dixon Watson on Nov 12, 2017

    What is your wall color -I love it!

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  • Valerie Craig Valerie Craig on Nov 23, 2017

    I am in the midst of re-doing my grown daughter's bedroom for my grandsons when they come for sleepovers. This is exactly what I am planning to do on the dead-space wall behind the bedroom door. Thanks for sharing your pictures....now I know exactly what it is going to look like.

  • Jan Oland Jan Oland on Dec 13, 2017

    If the child is young (and is judging from the book titles) this is very dangerous. Climbing up to get a book, falling books, falling child. I don’t think this should be installed for a child under the age of about nine.

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