Selling your house? Then get rid of all those books they destroy the feng shui
How many books do you have in your house? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Too many to count? And are they all neatly stored on tidy, regimented shelves or, even better, out of sight in cupboards? Because if you are planning to sell your home and you are an untidy bibliophile, then heaven help you. All the property experts are adamant on this point. Pace Anthony Powell, books most certainly do not furnish any room that you want to present to the buying public as a des res,
Never mind chucking out the chintz; the message is, chuck out the printed word. The possession of a substantial library is now seen as an almost shameful condition, cluttering up your 'living space', doubtless with catastrophic effects on its feng shui, and rendering your home a no-go area as far as potential buyers are concerned.
I was once visited by a decluttering guru so expert in her field that she has her own television series. She eyed my book-filled living-room beadily and interrogated me: 'How many of these books you ever gonna read again?' As I mumbled something along the lines of 'Well, you never know . .. I just like having them around'. I could see that her mind was made up. Books are a waste of space.
It has long been a mystery to me, as I peruse estate agents' particulars for houses whose owners are apparently people of taste and refinement, judging by the furniture and pictures in the glossy photos, that I so rarely see any evidence that they ever read. These places are so unlike the houses of my friends and acquaintances, where books tend to fill all available bookcases — even those that have been built in every possible nook, cranny and landing — and the overflow settles in piles on the stairs, on windowsills and on the floor by the bed.
But maybe my friends and I just don't know how to live. A leading Surrey estate agent told me, 'In most houses, books are usually found only in the family room, while in much larger houses they are relegated to a study which is rarely large enough to be photographed to any great effect.'
Back in the 'family room', where Surrey agents are apparently most likely to find 'paperbacks, children's books and cookery books', these are all 'tidied up' before the photographs are taken.
In smart country houses, before the snapper starts snapping, he will, says a representative of one of the agents whose properties appear every week in Country Life. 'best dress' the rooms, removing books, 'which make the room look unattractive'.
Visit the show apartments of new developments, and the books have not been tidied away; they were never in the scheme of things at all. You generally find the cookbook-du-jour currently the new River Café one — in the pristine designer kitchen, but the rest of the place contains nothing in hard covers, and nowhere to put any. At the budget end of the scale this is understandable — in the tiny quarters of the cheaper new-build flats the intrusion of a bookcase would diminish the overall size of a room quite noticeably. But at the de luxe end of the market, vast sweeps of empty space, white walls and the odd piece of angular glass sculpture are the preferred look — that, and a monster television screen, of course.
Recently I spent a weekend in a £3 million Thames-side penthouse that John Major had once gone so far as to put down a deposit on. Three thousand square feet of elegantly minimal open-plan living space, a double-height reception room with views to die for — and all I could think was how the whole effect would have been ruined by a shelf-ful of the former PM's well-thumbed Wisd ens.
But perhaps it's not books per se that house-sellers hate; it's the wrong sort of books. One interior-design company that gets a lot of show-home work told me indignantly that they 'include particular books within their show units; for example, photography, fine art and architecture', as they feel that 'this appeals to the sophisticated, educated and well-travelled individual' — who presumably wouldn't be seen dead reading a biography, a classic novel, a volume of Victorian poetry, a work of political philosophy, in fact anything that doesn't have lots of lovely big pictures.
A big stately home in Surrey that is now being converted into apartments has a great hall decorated by John Francis Bentley, architect of Westminster Cathedral. Under the stained-glass window, the original bookcases have been restored and French-polished, and a complete 'library' of fake books has been commissioned to 'complete the overall grandeur of the room'. Saves anyone the bother of having to read the wretched things, I suppose.
Another designer claims 'often [not always, mind, but often] to add books, especially within studies', as they feel that books are 'very much part of everyday life'. But not everyone's life, presumably.
So if you are putting your book-filled house on the market, prepare to struggle for a successful sale. 'I don't believe that a vendor's choice of reading material is likely to have a detrimental effect on a sale,' says the Surrey agent reassuringly. 'It is noticeable, however, that prospective purchasers tend to gravitate towards a bookcase — usually with surprise or approval, depending on what they see.'
Get those fashionable cookery books and lavishly illustrated photographic volumes out now.
Karen Robinson is supplements editor of the Sunday Times.
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