Ikea have sold Billy bookshelves for many years and although they also sell other bookcases the Billy is one of their most popular lines.
Billy is now a whole storage solution range from IKEA, there are several different bookcases which vary in width and there are also a couple of heights. You are also able to buy doors to attach to the bookcases to make storage dust-free and if your house has very high ceilings you can even buy extra units which fit on the top to increase the storage. The bookcases are also available in several finishes: white, beech veneer, birch veneer, oak veneer and then also black, red, blue and silver in some of the sizes.
We selected the standard Billy bookshelf with an Oak Veneer. The dimensions are 202cm tall, 28cm deep and 80cm wide. These cost £55 each but the white ones are only £35 each.
The bookshelves are flat-pack furniture but each full-size one weighs 38KG and the box is over 2 metres long so careful consideration should be given into transportation. If your vehicle is not big enough it is possible to arrange home delivery.
The construction instructions for the Ikea Billy Bookshelf are not terribly clear but having built many other things a bookcase is quite straightforward so it went together very quickly and easily. However the instructions tell you to slide the back panel in but this is actually quite difficult and the back panel actually broke at the bottom when we attempted this. Luckily this will be hidden by books but I wasn’t too pleased. Besides this slight problem the construction was very quick and the bookcases were ready to use in no time.
The bookcase has a cut-out notch at the back to fit around the skirting boards to allow a snug fit against the wall. Ours is a modern house so our skirtings are quite small so the bookcase fitted beautifully but if you lived in a house with large moulded skirting boards you would probably have to cut more out to make them fit properly.
There are five shelves and the middle shelf is not adjustable but the others can be moved quite a lot to allow the accommodation of books of varying sizes. This really good as large books such as atlases never seem to fit anywhere properly and they look fine on these shelves.
The finish of the bookcase is nice, it is obviously not an expensive piece of furniture but it feels very solid and the shelves seem strong and don’t look as if they will be prone to sagging, the IKEA recommendation is less than 30kg which is a lot of books! The surfaces are smooth and the oak veneer has a nice colour to it. The bookcases also come with wall-fixings which are an excellent idea as we attach all our tall furniture to the walls to prevent accidents.
Overall I have been very impressed with these Billy bookcases. They are solid and give us a lot of storage in the space and are an attractive colour. They are a reasonable price and do the job we want perfectly. I would recommend them but measure your car first if you intend on driving them home yourself!
Learn more about this author, Dawn Ilsley.