Don’t mind the pages, notice the palette: Inside India’s love affair with gorgeous bookshelves

Kothari, in her own words, did not set out to become a book stylist, but somewhere along the way, the brief changed as clients began arriving at consultations with not just Pinterest boards and  furniture references, but also images of bookshelves.

“Books are now part of every decor conversation,” she says. “Clients usually request a proper corner in their house and they want that corner to have aesthetic vibes.”

When asked whether social media has driven this shift, she says, “When Pinterest was introduced, we were the ones scrolling it, designers, professionals. Now every client scrolls Pinterest. They come to us with ideas for every corner, including books, definitely.”

Instagram has worsened the malice as clients now send reference images of other people’s homes, other people’s shelves, asking interior designers to replicate it. Kothari, however, says the demand is not purely decorative. “Some people like reading and some don’t. For those who don’t read, books become a decorative piece, something just to decorate. But even then, there are a few novels they will end up reading.”

For clients who do read, the ask is different. “They tell us: we need a study room. But when we prepare these corners, they tell us it should be a quiet pause inside the house. It should blend naturally with the home, it should not look like a different zone.” The shelf, in other words, is not always dishonest. It is just doing more than one job.

At Bahrisons Booksellers, one of Delhi’s most beloved independent bookstores, this tension between the book as object of knowledge and the book as object of beauty plays out on the shop floor every day. “Yes, social media has been one of the key factors,” says Sikendar Kumar Rai, the owner of the store. “It has become a place for people to impress others, even if they don’t read, they need books for display.”

Hardcover and leather-bound volumes in vogue

Interior designers often visit bookstores with colour palette and dimensions in mind. (Photo: Gitika Sharma)

The books being sought for these purposes are specific: hardcover editions, leather-bound volumes, visually weighty things that carry a certain gravitas on a shelf even when they have never been opened.

The question of whether this aestheticisation is drawing new people into reading, or simply reducing books to props, does not yield a clean answer at Bahrisons either. “There are books demanded for display, showrooms, cafes, with coffee table books, hardcover books,” Rai says. .

What is clear is that a new kind of customer has emerged: one who arrives with a mood board. “People and interior designers come with very accurate colour palettes, sizes in mind. They come with the dimensions of their shelves and accordingly take the books.”

Sometimes, Rai adds, there is a nod to “compatibility of titles too”, a concession that the words inside still matter, even if only faintly. Hardbound covers, the store observes, are particularly sought after not just for their appearance but because they have more shelf life, they hold their form, their colour, their presence over time. The decorative book, it turns out, must also be a durable one.

“Some people buy it for decoration, some actually want to read it, some want to make their space look ambient and want to create a good atmosphere in their desired places,” Rai says. It is as honest a summary of the moment as any.

Books, coffee and conversations

At Reader’s Coffee House in Noida, the café comes first, and the books follow. The shelves aren’t carefully planned. “Most of them are donated. A few are newly purchased. We don’t decide anything,” says manager Paresh, who only goes by his first name, “but they sit easily within the space.” As more cafés begin to double up as reading spots, the idea isn’t always about building libraries as much as letting books exist alongside coffee and conversation.

“The concept is that you come here and you read. That is the whole concept,” he adds, describing an atmosphere that is simply “lively and subtle.”

Then there is the reader caught somewhere in between, neither the devoted bibliophile nor the purely aesthetic collector, but something more honest and more common than either.

A student in Delhi, when asked about her shelves, describes owning series, trilogies, complete sets, seven parts, three parts, all of them lined up and visually satisfying in a way that is genuinely meaningful to her. “I used to be an avid reader but now even looking at them on my shelf is enough for me because of my time schedule,” she says. “But I would want to dive back into that habit of reading. Books are not only great for reading but they also add to the design and look of the space as well.”

It is a candid admission that contains no apology, and perhaps should not. Life narrows. Time shrinks. The books remain on the shelf, patient, available, still carrying the possibility of being picked up.

An aspirational bookshelf

Books have always signalled something beyond their content. A library was once the marker of a certain class, a certain aspiration. The Instagram bookshelf is, in some ways, the 21st-century descendant of the leather-bound Victorian library, a performance of intellectual identity, dressed up for a new audience. What has changed is the relationship between the signal and the substance. The performance has been decoupled from the practice.

And yet the practice has not disappeared. In the same city where interior designers arrive at bookstores with shelf dimensions and colour palettes, readers still linger, still browse, still leave with something they intend to finish. The reading life continues, a little quieter now, a little less photogenic, a little more private.

Perhaps this is where the story lands: not in condemnation of the beautiful shelf, and not in nostalgia for a reading culture that was never as universal as we imagine, but in the recognition that books have always been asked to carry more than their pages.

The aesthetic shelf is not a corruption of that impulse. It is simply its latest form. The question, as always, is whether we occasionally put down the phone, reach past the colour-coded spines, and actually open one.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​