Nooks for reading books are rising in popularity

At a Los Angeles home that was under renovation, an unused closet at the back of a family room was turned into a snug reading nook, painted an inviting shade of emerald green. A Hong Kong family who owned thousands of books had their designer create stacks of shelves across one wall, in front of which they placed a four-seat table, library-style, with the directive that the only activity that would take place there would be book-related.

The owners of a flat in Mayfair, London, asked their decorator to section off 300 square feet at the end of a joint living-dining room, and create a reading space with room for coffee table books and a comfy couch. No desk required.

While home offices and work spaces are now a matter of course in any residential environment, reading nooks are beginning to rise in popularity as people realise there are few things more comforting than curling up quietly with a book. As a result, ideas for nooks are all over the design blogosphere, ranging from the simple (a beanbag in the corner of a bedroom) to the inventive (a reading room hidden behind a wall of bookshelves).

"There are more people who want a place just for books, not for technology," said Kamini Ezralow, founder of London-based Ezralow Design Studio. "It should be a space separated from the daily grind of the house."

Ezralow was asked to create such a space in the Mayfair apartment of a client who wanted an open living/dining entertaining space but didn't want to sacrifice an area for reading. She built a unit that could house a selection of coffee-table books as well as artefacts, and designed it around a sofa to achieve what she described as "a cocoonish feel". Lamps are attached to a mirrored back wall, the sofa flips into a bed for guests, and the slender middle drawer of the shelving unit turns into a bedside table.

"It's what the word 'nook' really means - an area you can retreat to, to be quiet and read and relax."

Louis Lau, design director of Hong Kong studio Ample Design, said that most of his clients assumed that the only place they could really relax and read was in bed. But he offers other solutions. For one client, he created sliding mirrored doors that hid shelves stacked with thousands of books. For another he built four-metre-high bookcases and added a rectangular desk that wouldn't look out of place in a public library. It is there that a family of four gathers to read nightly.