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You are here: Home / Asides / Good Bookshelves

Good Bookshelves

By Mark Shead 5 Comments

Quick Tip: When buying bookshelves beware of particle board shelves. They are usually decorative and not designed to hold the weight of real books. After a few months they will bow and eventually dump your books on the floor. You can sometimes glue or screw a board to the bottom of each shelf to improve its strength, but solid wood is a better option.

Filed Under: Asides Tagged With: bookshelf

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Comments

  1. Andrew says

    May 15, 2008 at 11:38 am

    This isn’t universal, though. We’ve had IKEA’s “Billy” bookshelves in heavy use in our library for 12 years, with no problems. See here, for example:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/asr-cascadian/528288557/

    (You can see there’s a space between the bookcases, but that’s because the floor isn’t level, not because the particleboard is warping.)

    Reply
  2. Mark Shead says

    May 15, 2008 at 4:16 pm

    @Andrew – I’m guessing that those are made a bit differently than the $49 shelves from Office Depot. Are they simply thin particle board or do they have a reinforcing rod of some type?

    Reply
  3. Andrew says

    May 27, 2008 at 9:31 am

    Hi, Mark. Sorry to take a while to get back and see your reply. The particleboard is about 3/4″ thick and not reinforced.

    You are right that any thinner than that might make me nervous.

    Reply
  4. Dwight says

    June 20, 2008 at 10:41 am

    I put up some particle board shelves years ago using the metal rails that you screw into the wall studs and the adjustable brackets. I bought 3/4″ x 6′ plain particle boards and they have never bowed. I use them in my den/home office. There is a good bit of weight on them and they are doing fine. I agree that I would not use the thin vinyl covered particle board shelves to try to support anything heavy though.

    Reply
  5. Arjun Muralidharan says

    June 20, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    I like my IKEA Billy shelves. They’re classic, and basically timeless. They’re not very fashionable, but I think they get out of the way and it’s up to you to make your books look good on them and free of clutter…

    Reply

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