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Do you own lots of books? I am a real bookworm, so I have hundreds of books of all shapes and sizes. When left for a while, they have a tendency to get really messy. Colour coding my books is the best way I’ve found to combat messy book syndrome. Now I’ve colour coded my books and rearranged them into rainbow order, my once messy bookshelves have now become a colour coded bookshelf that’s the highlight of our lounge.
So how do you colour code your bookshelves? It’s a bit time consuming, but well worth the effort. Let me show you how I created our colour coded bookshelf. Through this blog post you’ll see several slightly different arrangements, which have been taken over the last year as I have added or removed more books.
My Bookshelf Before It Got Colour Coded
Let’s talk about our mighty shelves first. My brother made them for us out of reclaimed boards, to fit our old house. Thankfully, they fit our new house perfectly. We have them either side of a wall light and our electric piano.
Our cat Dotty loved climbing our bookshelves when she was a kitten, as the ends make a perfect cat ladder. And this is how they looked before I reorganised them into the colour coded bookshelves of dreams. We found them really hard to keep tidy and just gave up!
Introducing My Colour Coded Bookshelf
Even when they were tidy, our bookshelves somehow always looked a little underwhelming to me. I had loosely ordered them by genre. But now, they are so tidy and pleasing. Colour coding a bookshelf is so simple yet so pleasing!
So What’s The Best Way to Colour Code Your Books?
Warning: it gets a lot messier before it gets tidy and organised! Let’s take you through the steps to colour coded bookshelf heaven.
First, sort book into colour groups
I found emptying the books all over the floor was the best way to colour code them. So I would recommend doing this only if you know you won’t have anyone round! I did this over Lockdown so it wasn’t a problem that it took a few days to perfect. I got my kids involved: we laid the books out spine upwards, in rows, according to colour.
This is also a great opportunity to have a mini cull of duplicates, or books you no longer want. I have to confess I didn’t find many of them though! They can go to charity or a friend.
Next, arrange each colour group in shade order
Once you have the books in colour code, rearrange them so that you start with the darkest shade, and work to the lightest. So start with dark red to orangey red, to dark orange to light orange, dark yellow to greeny yellow and so on.
You may find you have a lot of creamy beige books like me. I decided to put these at the base of the bookshelf. We have chairs and other things in front of them so it’s better that the neutral ones go there.
Then put your books back in rainbow order
Once you have segmented your books into colour order, and then rainbow order, put them back into your book case. This is actually the part that takes the longest in my experience. This is because I was quite picky about not flowing one colour onto the next shelf. As you can see, I have red going to orange on the top shelf. Then yellow going to green on the next one down. It turns out I have a lot of green books so I had to sub-categorise these into pale and dark.
And even then, I had that pesky Margaret Atwood book that just wouldn’t fit in. I don’t mind that at all though. As you can see I am missing a few pink books, which I have lent to people, or am reading. I always have a book or two out of place, depending on what I’m reading. It’s easy to put them back but I like to keep it casual.
Finally, arrange your books in an interesting way
To create interest, and to make the available space work, I turned some books around to create book stacks. This means they take up less space, so you can fit more in. This works really well if you start with bigger books and work up to smaller one. Or, in the case of our travel books, do a mini rainbow order book stack.
I like to stagger the stacks so they aren’t all in one line, creating a casual zig zag down the shelf.
How to Style Your Colour Coded Rainbow Bookshelves
Although a rainbow of beautiful books will work really well, I like to add more. I added small ornaments to the top of the horizontal book stacks, to add more interest. Try small vases, stones, ornaments, disco balls, small photos in frames, pieces of origami, bottles, clocks, or even small houseplants. It’s the perfect way to give these items a home.
Should You Go Full Rainbow In Your Bookshelves?
Because we had two bookshelves, I had to decide whether to make them both rainbow, or just one. As we have so many books with black or white spines, I decided to keep the rainbow colour coding to the right shelf, and keep the left shelf a little plainer.
I put my childhood classic books on the left, grouped by author. This is just a tiny fraction of their books, they have hundreds in their bedrooms! We also have travel books, my husbands science books and the black-spine section on the left, along with the cook books and craft books.
The books that didn’t get sorted into rainbow order are cookery books, craft books and oversized books. We have loads of massive hardback gardening books, lots of big art books and tonnes of cookery books so they all go on the bottom shelf, or just behind an arm chair for easy browsing when I need cooking inspiration.
When You Shouldn’t Colour Code Your Bookshelves
The colour coded bookshelf isn’t for everyone. I sometimes get asked how I can ever find what I want to read. It’s not a problem for me as my books are all old friends and I easily remember the colour of the spines. I guess I have one of those brains! But if you don’t, or you are all about ordering books by the alphabet, colour coded bookshelves are probably not for you.
I hope you like our rainbow colour coded bookshelves, they are the backdrop to my Zoom calls when I’m working, as I have my desk set up in the corner of the lounge. As a freelance copywriter, it seems appropriate to be surrounded by books!
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