The Redmond Regional Library, 15990 NE 85th St., officially is now open, following a renovation.

A celebration, featuring balloons and cookies, was held Saturday. The focus of the renovation project was to give library users full access to computers, comfortable seating and other amenities that they expect and enjoy, according to Debra Westwood, library cluster manager for the Redmond, Kirkland and Kingsgate branches of the King County Library System (KCLS).

The Redmond location is one of the busiest in the KCLS, with about 42,000 people in and out every month and more than one million check-outs per year. Westwood knows that guests have been eager to have their library back in full swing.

Fresh carpeting and paint are among the new features and book shelves are now 60 inches tall instead of 90 inches.

“It’s like pruning a stand of trees. You’ll be able to see from one end of the library to another. It’ll be much lighter and more airy,” Westwood explained.

Sections of the library will be color-coded so that users can more quickly hone in on their areas of interest. For example, the fiction area will be banded in forest green, non-fiction in blue and the teen section in orange.

“It’s more intuitive than the Dewey Decimal System,” Westwood noted.

The teen area has been expanded to serve a growing population of users, with more room to do homework and lower shelves to make it feel “less like a fortress and more like a place to gather,” she added.

The children’s section is not quite finished — there’s still some lightening and brightening on the way — but library staff didn’t want to delay the re-opening any longer, said Westwood.

And additional work on meeting rooms is forthcoming, but that will be done at night, so as not to disrupt library business.

Outside of the building, KCLS has added a third self-check-in station to meet the demand. The Redmond Regional Library has the highest adoption rate for self-check-in of any branch. About 75 percent of books are returned that way, said Westwood.

To make usage more comfortable 24/7, even in inclement weather, the exterior stations now are housed in a sheltered area, similar to a bus stop shelter.

Westwood realizes some citizens have questioned the need for renovations, but she stated that regular upgrades are more cost-efficient than fixing old or shabby furnishings. New lighting in the library will also save energy.

For more information about the Redmond Regional Library, call (425) 885-1861 or visit www.kcls.org/redmond.