Bespoke alcove and fireplace joinery by Reeve & Co – fitted bookcases, cupboards, display shelving and combined bookcase-cupboard units built precisely into chimney breast alcoves for London townhouses, Victorian terraces and country houses. Period detailing or contemporary clean profiles, painted or in natural hardwood, made in our Suffolk workshop.

The alcove bookcase: a classic commission, done properly

The fitted bookcase or alcove cupboard flanking a chimney breast is one of the most common fitted-furniture commissions in British domestic architecture – and one of the most often done poorly. Cheap timber, incorrect proportions, applied mouldings that sit proud of the cornice rather than returning to it, shelves that sag, and drawer boxes that refuse to run smoothly are all common signs that the joinery was not treated as a serious piece of furniture. Reeve & Co takes the alcove commission as seriously as any other: the proportions are drawn from the room’s own architectural language, the construction is solid, and the detailing at the cornice, dado and floor junction is resolved before a single panel is cut.

Our alcove and fireplace joinery has been installed in Victorian and Edwardian terraces in Kensington, Chelsea and Belgravia, in Georgian townhouses in the Home Counties, in a Belgravia apartment flanking a period marble chimneypiece, and in contemporary open-plan living rooms where the chimney breast provides the only natural opportunity for fitted storage. The approach differs in each case; the standard of making does not.

Alcove joinery types and configurations

Getting the proportions right

Alcove proportions are not arbitrary. The width of the bookcase frame, the depth of the shelves, the height at which the cupboard doors give way to open shelving, the reveal between the bookcase face and the chimney breast projection, and the profile of the cornice are all governed by the architecture of the room. In a Victorian terrace, the cornice profile, skirting height, ceiling height and window proportions provide a grid from which the bookcase proportions should follow.

We draw each alcove commission in elevation before manufacture begins, showing the frame widths, shelf positions, door sizes and moulding profiles in relation to the room’s existing features. This is where the proportion is fixed – not on site during installation, where it is too late to correct a decision that looks wrong.

What to consider before commissioning alcove joinery

The most useful question to answer before commissioning alcove bookcases is whether the primary purpose is display, storage, or a combination of both. A room that is primarily a sitting room, with books arranged for visual effect and occasional reference, calls for a different interior to a room that is also a working library, with books in heavy rotation, archive boxes at the base and a need for good shelf lighting. The design starts with the use, not with an aesthetic preference.

Shelf depth deserves specific consideration. Standard paperbacks and hardbacks are adequately housed on a 220mm shelf. Oversized art books, encyclopaedias and archive boxes require 300mm or more. A single shelf depth across all the shelves in a bookcase is sometimes right, but a deeper lower shelf with a shallower upper shelf, or a combination of fixed and adjustable shelf positions, often serves the actual collection better. We ask clients to measure a representative sample of their books before we draw the shelf layout.

The cupboard base below the shelves is frequently underused in alcove bookcases. It is often treated as a catch-all for things that do not have another home. With some thought at the design stage, the base unit can house a sound system and cables, a wine and drinks collection with a fitted wine rack, a home office’s filing and archive, or simply deep general storage with pull-out shelving that makes access easy. None of these require major additional cost; they require a brief and a decision before the drawings are completed.

Materials and finishes

Recent alcove and fireplace joinery projects

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Commissioning alcove joinery alongside other fitted furniture

An alcove bookcase commission is often the first piece of fitted joinery a client commissions from Reeve & Co. It is a contained brief with a clear functional outcome, and it tends to demonstrate quickly whether the workshop’s approach and standards are the right fit for a client. A significant proportion of our longer relationships with private clients and their architects begin with a single pair of alcove bookcases and extend from there into wardrobes, a fitted study, a kitchen, or timber panelling across several rooms.

For clients who are planning a wider programme of fitted joinery – perhaps a complete renovation of a London townhouse or a country-house refurbishment – it is usually more efficient to discuss the whole programme at the outset, even if the work is phased over time. The drawing and design work for several rooms can be co-ordinated as a single scheme, so the detailing and proportions read consistently across the house. This also allows us to plan the workshop programme more accurately and give realistic timescales for each phase.

Return to the fitted furniture overview or explore related services: timber wall panelling, TV and media joinery and fitted wardrobes.

Alcove joinery FAQs