Are waaaay too many books making your office space feel cluttered? I was feeling scatter-brained by my piles of books and decided to upgrade the home office storage with some classy bookcases and upgraded storage. Let me show you how to DIY this classy home office bookcase addition with lighting.
Here’s the bare home office wall that wasn’t using any of it’s potential.
All those boxes of books need a home, so I measured this space and brainstormed options. This year is a bit plagued by inventory shortages. And while I had hoped to buy some full-height or near full-height storage, I just couldn’t find any in-stock. If I had the option, I would have explored the shallow 13 inch deep IKEA PAX storage. But nothing was available.
So. I found some very cute and reasonable bookcases from Target that juuuust fit in the available wall width. These were two Target 72.5 inch tall Carson 5 Shelf Bookcases in white. Here they are in place.
I splurged and opted for the thicker-looking bookcases at $180 each instead of the standard thin shelves. On one hand I thought that I might have these for a while, and I wanted them to look substantial. On the other hand, I wanted the option to easily remove them. So that’s why I used these bookcases and didn’t go with a full-height built-in here. Who knows though. If I do that in the future, I will share it with you!
Anyway, at 72.5 inches tall, I knew there would be some space above the bookcases, and figured I could add nice-looking storage boxes and maybe some accent lighting.
Paint and Prep:
I’m a stickler for matching whites and that zen felling a cohesive design can give you. So I hauled these bookcases outside, gave them a quick sanding, primer, and two coats of white paint to match the doors and trim. If you wanted a more detailed process on painting, check out this post where I painted an IKEA TV stand from black to white! I used the exact same process here.
Here are the bookcases getting transformed to a zen-filled matching white.
I also notched out the side of the corner bookcase leg so that it would slide past the baseboard and site right up next to the wall. Here are the notched legs. If you do this, be careful when moving the bookcase around as the legs now have less strength. Don’t rotate around those legs. They might snap. Thankfully, I knew that going into this and was very careful getting these bookcases in place.
Bookcase Install:
Ok, now that everything is properly prepped, lets get those bookcases back in place. Here they are loaded up with books. So nice to have some proper storage!
That little bit of space I got back by cutting the side legs of the bookcase allowed the door to open fully, lol. I measured correctly but the floors are exactly level so the bookcases tilt a bit towards the door. You can’t tell unless you put a level to them. So don’t tell anyone, and we’ll just continue forward. Looking good yeah?
Additional Storage:
The bookcases could definitely been left as-is and been great. BUT, I needed even more storage. Yep, so I looked around for some good-looking or inconspicuous storage boxes at a decent price and found these at IKEA. They are the IKEA Tjena storage box in white. At under $8 a box, they worked great.
I’ll be honest and say that I am temped to paint these the same white as the door and the bookcases….perhaps I will get around to that one day. But for now they blend in pretty well.
Home Office Bookcase Lighting:
Adding feature lighting is a great way to really bring a space up a notch. After doing the kitchen remodel on the Main House (more on that later!), I came to love the cabinet and bookcase lighting options from IKEA. I’ll admit, figuring out what’s what in their lighting options is not the clearest. But after taking the time to learn their systems for the kitchen, I knew this would be an easy add-on for these bookcases.
I chose to use one IKEA Ytberg dimmable cabinet light above each bookcase, centered between the storage boxes. Here are the instructions of the Ytberg and you can see the general shape, spoilers!
This is really reasonable at under $12 per cabinet light.
Attach the light to the top of the bookcase with either small screws or a strip of sticky 3M tape. I opted for screws because I light knowing they are super-solidly attached. Here is the connection piece as I struggled to screw the very tiny screws.
Now you slip the back end of the cabinet light over this connection piece. That’s it to hold it in place.
Wireless Remote:
Next, I splurged a bit and decided to dimmable, wireless remote! What! Fancy right? To do this with IKEA lighting, you often times need to connect IKEA’s wireless receiver, named Tradfri, to the lights. It’s basically a gray rectangle the lights plug into shown here. This was the most expensive part of the lighting system at just under $30.
So the lights plug into the Tradfri. Then add a plug-in chord to the Tradfri. This powers all the lights connected to the Tradfri together. I used IKEA’s Ansluta power chord with an on-off switch on the chord.
I could have stopped there and simply turned the lights on with the power chord. But, a cool wireless remote that allowed me to dim the lights from my desk would make me feel like I have my life together. Also, IKEA was having a sale on wireless remotes. I bought their Styrbar remote in white for under $13 and started to finally feel like an adult.
When not at my desk helping me look like a total badass, the remote is housed on the side of the bookcases with a magnet that attaches to a metal housing plate. The metal housing plate is attached to the bookcase with some 3M sticky tape that comes with the remote. You can see it here.
The Home Office Bookcase Reveal:
Ta-da! Here is the completed home office bookcase with lighting and extra storage.
This is real life so you get to see all my actual books, not Instagram’s color-coded books. But you can imagine that it would look awesome! It’s still pretty good yeah?
Here is a breakdown of costs:
2 Target 72″ Carson 5 shelf bookcases in white: under $180 x 2 = under $360
4 IKEA TJENA Storage Boxes in white: under $8 per box = under $32
2 IKEA Ytberg Cabinet Lights: under $12 each = under $24
1 IKEA Tradrfi driver for wireless remote: under $30
1 IKEA Ansluta Power Supply Chord: under $7
1 IKEA Styrbar Remote in white: under $13
Paint for bookcases: free from past projects
TOTAL = $466 + tax. Pretty good yeah? I did splurge a bit on the bookcases and the lighting, but I’m pleased with the result. Let me know in the comments below if this helped you upgrade your home office space!
