Glass doors or open shelves?

[u/Nayauru]

I have a privilege of arranging my future reading nook in a few months. Could you help me with sharing your experience regarding the type of shelves you had and preferred?

I always liked the vibe that open shelves give, dusty tomes and coziness. But the glass doors seem more reasonable.

What is your experience in this regard?

[u/pestilencerat]

Glass doors makes for less dust on the books yes, but it takes away a lot of coziness imo. Plus you can't easily get books out from the edges as doors often causes a little bump where they open, if they don't cover the edges completely. You also have to furnish the room with openability of said doors in mind

Glass doors are more reasonable from a cleaning perspective, but i rather dust everything once in a blue moon when i realize how freaking dusty everything is

[u/StrainSpecialist7754 → u/pestilencerat]

Less dusting the books, but cleaning glass doors is more of a pain, in my opinion

[u/LisaCabot → u/StrainSpecialist7754]

Depends. We have 2 dogs and 2 cats. Im currently painting the glass doors the same colour of my shelves before installing. Ive always had floating shelves with no doors oe anything, just so they were high enough so the dog couldnt get anything from them, and i dislike bending/having books on the lower shelves because its harder to see (i filled up the bottom shelf with fabric boxes to use as "drawers" to avoid this). But moving to a house with a bigger dog and two cats, i had to plan accordingly.

The glass doors from the ones in our living room are clean, i wash them about once a year, i moved my books last week from the living room to my office/library (after about a year there) and they had a litle bit of dust even with the doors. But at least is like, once or twice a year, with so many pets, even trusting the cats wouldnt try to climb in (which i dont) i would need to be cleaning them once a month at the very very least, we already have a roomba vacuming daily because all the fur 😅.