Best-Selling Coffee Table Books to Inspire Your Own Custom Creation
Before you start on your own DIY coffee table book project, it can be very helpful to browse similar books that are available in stores, online, and at your local library. Some of the most inspiring content can be found in the latest best-selling coffee table books. While your own custom coffee table book ideas are sure to be unique, you can find tons of inspiration in the different types, genres, design styles, photo layouts, and text elements of these popular bestsellers.
We’ve picked out a broad selection of the latest best-selling coffee table books to help you find inspiration for your own unique coffee table book designs. While each one has a different concept, notice what these books have in common – a comprehensive approach to their subject matter, striking visuals, and tightly edited text. They’re browsable, great conversation starters, and have a double function as eye-catching home decor.
Take a look at these best-selling coffee table books and apply their stand-out design elements to your own creation. Mixbook’s collection of coffee table book themes makes it very easy to do so.
Ocean Wanderlust
“Ocean Wanderlust” by Kevin Koenig, a best-selling coffee table book from high-end publisher Assouline, brings together a diverse collection of striking images united by the ocean theme. It includes more than 200 photos and illustrations, which represent the ocean through the lens of travel, science, fashion, art, architecture, and science. Contemporary and vintage images are included – a feature you might embrace for your own book.
The book features mostly large-scale images, and on select spreads there are quotations in large text paired with full-page images. Our photography journey theme offers similar layout options so you can replicate this refined design in your own coffee table book.
This bestseller’s high-quality linen hardcover is another feature you can copy by choosing the faux linen family photo album theme. The cover aesthetic also reminds us of our trendy winter coffee table book and the trendy coffee table travel book.
Ballparks Past and Present
“Ballparks Past and Present” is a best-selling coffee table book dedicated to Major League Baseball ballparks past and present. This is a premium leather-bound edition, which might inspire you to upgrade your own coffee table book with the finest of cover and paper types.
The book’s content is wide-ranging while sticking to its central concept, with historic and modern photos, lengthy and informative text blocks, and magazine-like multi-image spreads. Those spreads include fun accents of baseball motifs and page headers that look like stadium signage. You can find similar sporty motifs and stickers throughout our sports photo book collection. Another fun feature is a ballpark checklist for readers to use. This is something you could recreate in your own book.
Fans of any sport can take inspiration from this coffee table book. How about dedicating a book to your own favorite team or league – local, national, or international – or a niche like memorabilia, stadiums, equipment, or uniforms.
The Japanese Garden
“The Japanese Garden” by Sophie Walker presents an in-depth exploration of 800 years of Japanese gardens. It features essays by Walker, an author and garden designer, plus gorgeous photos of 100 featured gardens, perspectives from leading artists, architects, and cultural practitioners, and helpful tips for gardeners.
This best-selling coffee table book has a lot of variety in its compositions, which all include ample white space. Varied layouts feature wide white borders, panoramic spreads, and thumbnail grids for closeups of plant species. You can find a similar array of elegant compositions in our multi-photo layout theme.
Read up on layouts: Mixbook Studio Deep Dive: Layouts
Another inspiring element of “The Japanese Garden” is its calming color palette limited to only emerald green and pale salmon, plus crisp white pages and black text. Some of the essay pages layer black text over solid salmon backgrounds – a design concept you can copy with a few clicks in the Mixbook Studio™. You can also find a similar aesthetic in our simple summer illustrated coffee table book theme.
The Travel Book
“The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World” from Lonely Planet features a whopping 680 images covering 200 countries. This global bestseller is now in its fourth edition. It includes facts and expert insider knowledge, tips like the best time of year to visit each country, and recommendations for books, local foods, and music. You might include similar details in your own travel photo book while documenting your globetrotting adventures (even if you’re not quite at 200 countries yet!).
Many of this book’s photo spreads feature edge-to-edge layouts, which you can replicate in any Mixbook photo book creation using the “Layouts” panel, or by dragging and dropping your photos into place. The full photo travel theme is a good choice for custom coffee table book ideas inspired by this bestseller.
Peonies: Beautiful Varieties for Home & Garden
The best-selling coffee table book, “Peonies: Beautiful Varieties for Home & Garden” by Jane Eastoe, is a visual treasure packed with stunning photographs. It’s also a useful gardening guide with lots of advice about growing some 60 varieties of peonies. The natural beauty of the flowers in mostly pink hues is captured in dramatic closeups and painterly compositions. Take inspiration from this book by creating a unique coffee table book design around a singular obsession. It could be a deep dive into a particular botanical species, like this bestseller, or any photogenic subject you just can’t get enough of, be it sunsets, covered bridges, neon signs, or sneakers. If you love the romantic, floral aesthetic, check out these fully customizable themes:
- Romantic watercolor wedding coffee table book
- Bold floral blooms by Jess Phoenix
- Everyday moments by Hallmark
Tip: If your single-subject coffee table book idea has a particular color scheme, like the pinks of “Peonies,” try filtering Mixbook photo book themes by color.
Walk With Me: New York
“Walk With Me: New York,” by photographer and fashion editor Susan Kaufman, features over 200 images of New York City. The concept of this best-selling coffee table book is photographs shot from the sidewalk while exploring the more serene sides of the city. Its captivating urban photography features townhouses, shops, parks, and streetscapes, with chapters for different neighborhoods. Readers also get to admire scenes from every season.
Take inspiration from this bestseller and create a coffee table book about your own home town, city, or state. You might be inspired by the fact that Kaufman took every photo in this book with her iPhone, and its concept started with her popular Instagram account. Maybe your social media archives are perfect material for a coffee table book idea!
These are just some of our themes designed especially for city-centric photo books:
The World in Vogue: People, Parties, Places
“The World in Vogue: People, Parties, Places,” edited by Hamish Bowles and Alexandra Kotur, features around 300 photos that document the luxury lives of A-list celebrities and trendsetters from around the world. It includes excerpts from many decades of Vogue magazine stories, plus images of weddings, vacations, gardens, houses, and parties, all captured by world-class photographers.
Even if you don’t run in A-list circles or have your parties featured in luxury magazines, you can take inspiration from the high-end vibes of this best-selling coffee table book. Elevate photos from your own amazing parties, and your fabulous friends and family, into a personalized version of this book. Give it the look of a fashion magazine by customizing the editorial wedding coffee table book theme, or embrace the luxe aesthetic of the luxury vacation coffee table book.
Inspired by these Best-Selling Coffee Table Books?
Then head over to Mixbook and get started on your own unique coffee table book! You might not be eyeing a spot on a big bestseller list, but your book will earn a prized spot in your home and be adored by everyone who gets to see it.
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