Bookcases and Open Shelving: What Goes Where, and How Much Is Too Much

Open shelving is cheap, light, and everything on it is on show. Depending on who sits nearest, that last part is either the best thing about it or the worst. It is also the quickest way to get files off the floor, and the kind of storage I most often see loaded wrong.

Back in August I wrote about whether you need a cupboard or shelving at all. This post assumes you have gone for shelving and would like it still standing straight in five years.

Pick the height by what is going on it

Our office bookcase with adjustable shelves keeps the same footprint whatever height you pick: 80cm wide and 40cm deep. The height comes from the number of shelves.

• 2 shelves, 80cm tall, from £106 ex VAT

• 3 shelves, 120cm tall, from £130

• 4 shelves, 160cm tall, from £145

• 5 shelves, 200cm tall, from £169

The 80cm one fits under most windows and makes a decent sideboard. At 120cm people lean on it to chat, so expect a mug on top by Friday. The 160cm and 200cm versions are library height, and a row of them along one wall becomes the office filing system.

My rule is that nobody should need a step for anything they use every week. The top shelf of the 200cm bookcase is for the archive box you open twice a year. That is fine, as long as everyone knows that is what it is for.

The weight maths

Nobody does this bit, and it decides what goes where.

Each shelf is rated to 20kg. The whole bookcase is rated to 75kg. A full lever arch file weighs about 2.5kg, and an 80cm shelf takes eight or nine of them side by side. So one shelf of lever arch files is already at its limit, before anyone adds the spare toner.

Now multiply. Five shelves of lever arch files comes to over 100kg, against a rating of 75kg. The tall bookcase is therefore not five shelves of files. It is two or three shelves of files at the bottom, with lighter things above: box files, half-full binders, reference books.

Heavy at the bottom matters for another reason. A bookcase carrying its weight up high wants to tip.

Fix the tall ones to the wall

The 160cm and 200cm bookcases are 40cm deep. That is a tall, narrow object, and someone tugging a file off the top shelf pulls it towards them. Fix anything that tall to the wall. It takes ten minutes, a drill and the right plugs for your wall. Most people skip it. Please do not.

Do the adjustable feet first. Office floors are rarely as flat as they look, and a bookcase that leans forward slightly will keep doing it. Level it, then fix it.

They are heavy, too. Depending on height, the bookcase weighs between 35kg and 68kg built, so the tall ones are a two-person lift. If you would rather not build it at all, installation is £49.95 an item at checkout and the crew put it where it is going.

Shelving that sits by the desk

The other two bookcases are lower and deeper, and they solve a different problem.

The desk high bookcase is 80cm wide, 60cm deep and 73cm high, from £135 ex VAT. It butts against the end of a 600mm deep desk and finishes level with the top, so the desk carries on and the shelving sits underneath. The top makes a good home for the printer. At the end of a desk run it also marks where one team stops and the next starts, and people can still see over it.

The mobile bookcase is the same footprint on castors, 76cm high with two adjustable shelves, from £156. It is for files that follow the work: the project folders that move to whichever desks are running that job, or the training kit that gets wheeled in on a Monday morning. Load it heavy at the bottom and it rolls without a wobble.

Keeping it looking tidy

Open shelving tells every visitor how organised you are. A few small habits help.

Keep one file colour per shelf. A row of matching spines looks deliberate even when the contents are not. Label the shelf edge as well as the file, so things go back where they came from. And keep the top of the low units nearly clear, because a flat surface at waist height collects everything in the office that has no home.

All three come in the same 13 finishes as Impulse desking, from beech, oak and walnut to white, black and two-tone versions with white sides, so the shelving can match the desks next to it.

If anything has to lock, shelving is the wrong answer, because none of these do. Personnel files and anything with customer details on it belong in a lockable cupboard, and personal belongings belong in a staff locker.

A short checklist

• Height chosen by what goes on it, with weekly things below head height.

• No more than 20kg on any shelf, and 75kg across the whole bookcase.

• Heavy things at the bottom, light things at the top.

• Anything 160cm or taller levelled, then fixed to the wall.

• Anything that has to lock, kept somewhere else.

All three are in our bookcases and shelving range, each with a 10 year guarantee and free standard delivery that usually lands inside a week.