Idea file: bookcases around east and south walls of lounge

In giving up the junk room, and relocating the kitchen, we will be losing three double-stacked, full height, full width Ikea Billy bookcases (in the now discontinued medium brown). Therefore, we'll need to add a whole bunch more bookshelves. In the post before, I looked at options for the west wall (under/flush/in front of the stairs). This one looks at the shelves running around the wall, above the corner settee.

Googling 'wall mounted shelves' throws up some gorgeously architectural (if somewhat impractical for us) ideas. We're bibliophiles, rather than pretty display type folks.

We're not the bric-a-brac type

Cute idea, if a touch rustic for us. And definitely no Dan Brown.

This is more the kind of thing I'm thinking of: shelves along the wall from about shoulder height to picture rail height, around 90cm, or three shelves. Or possibly, only 60cm from shoulder height, if that looks too heavy.

Although having pictures displayed  like this would mean you'd constantly knock them when you lean back in the couch.

It's be nice to have something a little interesting about them, rather than being purely utilitarian, but I'm not sure what. Perhaps painting the wall colour behind them a contrasting colour, to match the kitchen cabinetry for example (which might be a soft teal, for example).

As a jumping off point, this has some interesting ideas. Rather than simply perpendicular bits of timber, there could be different shapes/timbers/materials/colours. You lose a little shelf space, but over three layers, and about five linear metres, we can probably afford a few inches here and there to this kind of stuff.

Anyway, one to bounce around with the architects.