Use This Fake Coffee Book Trick For Luxe Home Decor On A Dime

Unless you've been spending long days and nights at the library, you may have heard that fake books are a thing. While offering nothing more than faux jackets in a variety of shapes, sizes, and designs, fake books are working as hard as a foreword to an unevenly written novel. There's the fake book TikTok hack perfect for hiding cords. You can also DIY hidden storage in plain sight with a TikTok bookshelf hack using these literary imposters. Then, there are some who actually do possess real books stored on tall bookcases but are using fake books at the top to fill space.

Well, the functional has now gone for show. In its next chapter in the home, fake books are being used to create the luxe look. After all, when it comes to home decor, there is an art in how to decorate a bookshelf, with multiple ways to incorporate books as art in your home. Consider the high-design places for showing them: under a coffee table, on a bar cart, or on the fireplace. Instant elegance! (OK, now you can rush to Amazon to price out how much you might save buying fake over real.)

This great money saving idea seemed to excite vitulls in her TikTok as much as a great book compels the reader to skip ahead to the end. Looking to decorate her coffee table, she paid $30 for seven fake books, saying she was unaware that they were reproductions. A collection of genuine coffee table books would cost hundreds of dollars. Showing off how she used book boxes on a nightstand in her guestroom, she said, "I mean, tell me they don't look perfect. I'm still, like, mindblown [sic] though."

She was going for designer show house chic. Others are using the fakes to create other high-end aesthetics, such as showing a stack of books in hot pink or displaying books about legendary fashion designers, masterful artists, trendy see-and-be-seen cities, or plants and flowers. There are boxes some that simulate spell books or look vintage. But, all varieties are prized for providing bespoke storage and clever hiding places for valuables.

Fake books assemble like gift boxes, with covers that are shut tight with an included peel-and-stick strip. Decorate plain versions to bring just the right color, design, or look to your interior. Use glue like Mod Podge to affix a material, such as decorative paper, and create the book title in sophisticated fonts of various sizes and surfaces with high-sheen stickers. Instead of decoupage, leave the fake books as they are and write the titles with markers to capture the simple look of Rae Dunn minimal mugs. 

You can also purchase plain boxes made of wood, employing the same technique for decorating, or construct the boxes from wood yourself. Even more creative book structures can be crafted from paper mache, cardboard, and (get this) used food containers. Of course, you can just repurpose old books with seen-better-days jackets that you might have at home or rescued at a thrift shop, garage sale, or from a generous neighbor in a free stuff Facebook group. Freshen up the cover with paint, or create a whole new cover out of decorative paper or other materials. For the ultimate fake books anywhere in your home, channel your inner Banksy to paint a trompe l'oeil bookshelf, with tomes limited only by your imagination.