A home library is to the brain what a kitchen is to the body.

It’s a place for nourishing the mind, for feasting on the comfort food of the written word. For an avid reader, it is perhaps the ultimate escape.

It has also become an attractive feature to home buyers. In a 2007-2008 survey by the National Association of Home Builders, 13 percent of potential or recent buyers described a library or den as essential in a new home, and another 50 percent called it desirable.

A comfort zoneHome builder Fred Zumpano thinks he knows why. In tough times, “I think there’s a comfort there,” he said.

When the economy sours, Zumpano said, people lean toward the traditional and its soothing familiarity. And what could be more traditional — and more comforting — than a library, heavy on the wood paneling and beamed ceilings?

That kind of library had long been a dream for Mary Lohman, a Hudson, Ohio, resident with a love for literature and a burgeoning collection of books. So when she and her husband, ophthalmologist Larry Lohman, bought a home in Hudson more than a year ago, they had a chance to make that dream a reality.

With the help of interior designer Susan Lobalzo, the Lohmans transformed a 12-by-12-foot den into a library and office with an Old World feel. Mahogany bookshelves cover two walls, a window seat stretches in front of a recessed window and a couple of unmatched armchairs provide places to loll next to the fireplace. Glazed wood, antique accents and faux-aged, molded plaster give the room a patina of antiquity, but it’s lighted for comfortable reading and wired for the computer equipment Mary Lohman needs for her ophthalmic consulting business.

Traditional, not stuffy
The library is traditional but not stuffy, thanks in large part to a contemporary painting over the fireplace and a playful pair of sconces shaped like women’s hands. Lobalzo spotted the sconces in a shop and said she knew immediately that her client would love them.

They were just the right whimsical touch, Lohman agreed. “I don’t like it when rooms take themselves too seriously.”

A place to retreat
The library is her refuge, Lohman said, a place where she can surround herself with the books she loves and enjoy the warmth of a fire in winter.
That’s exactly what a library is all about, Stow interior designer Jim Warner said.

A library is a retreat, Warner said, a place to appreciate the written word in a society where books are losing their centrality. “A library, to me, should always smell like old money,” he said with a chuckle. “Cognac and a cigar after dinner.”

Source: McClatchy Tribune News Service