4 Beautiful Color-Coordinated Libraries
When it comes to organizing their books, book-lovers can be divided into two broad categories: those who shove them wherever they can find space, and those who have devised a special system. If you belong in the second group, this is the article for you. Today, we want to show you 4 beautiful color-coordinated libraries.
The advantages of color-coordinated libraries
If you’re anything like us, you’ve probably tried out numerous different ways of organizing your books – by size, author, alphabetical order, by how they made you feel… But then when it comes to finding a specific book or adding a new one to your collection, you find that your system quickly falls apart.
If this is you, you may well be looking for a new way to organize your shelves. Color coordinating your books is a great way to organize your library, allowing you to find and add new books without having to spend hours reorganizing everything. But what makes this technique so effective? Let’s take a look:
1. It’s practical
You might be thinking that a color-coordinated library might be better suited to Instagram than everyday life. But this isn’t actually the case. Organizing by genre or author isn’t necessarily practical for everyone, especially if you have a large collection. It’s all too easy to forget authors’ names or exactly which genre you filed it under, especially if you haven’t read it in a while.
Don’t underestimate the power of visual memory. Many people remember books by their covers.
2. Visual impact
If you’re anything like us, your library is probably your pride and joy. And what better way to show off your collection than arranging them by color! Although many book-lovers already think of their books as works of art, you can take this idea one step further, and use them to decorate your home. If you want, you can even coordinate your books with the rest of your decor.
3. Fun
This is a really fun way to organize your children’s bookshelves, or the children’s section of your library. Plus, children’s novels are usually much more colorful than adults… And that’s exactly what your library needs.
4 Color-coordinated libraries
If you’re still not convinced about organizing your library by color, perhaps it’s time to take a look at some of our favorite examples:
1. Rainbow library
Fitted bookshelves are designed to make the very most of your space. They should be tailored perfectly to match the height of your ceiling, and fit around doors and windows. These shelves are ideal for anyone who has a particularly large collection of books. You could choose to arrange your books in a rainbow pattern, or so that they gradually shift from yellow to orange to red, or turquoise to navy to green.
2. Color-coordinated libraries: compartment shelves
Though similar to the classic wall shelves, floor to ceiling compartment shelves will give your room a much more formal look. These large shelves give you plenty of space to play around with, so you can have great fun re-arranging your books.
We would recommend using each compartment for a different color, placing black books on the bottom shelf, followed by blues, greens, whites, and finally reds and oranges at the top.
3. Classic shelves
You don’t need to have a huge library to be able color-coordinate your books. For example, if you only have three shelves, you can place black and white books on the bottom, greens, blues and purples in the middle, and reds, oranges and yellows at the top. This is a great idea for children’s rooms.
4. Color-coordinated library: monochrome books
For some people, the idea of a color-coordinated library might be a little too over the top. One way to counteract this is to rebind your books with matching-colored covers, so that they work in harmony with the rest of your decor.
Have we convinced you yet? If so, we would recommend taking the time to take all the books off your shelves and creating different piles for each color. This will make it much easier to organize them.
As black and white covers usually dominate our shelves, we’d advise placing these books at the center of your display. That way, it’ll be much easier to find room for new additions in the future.
Now that you’ve seen all the different ways you can color-coordinate your library, you’ll be able to get your collection organized in no time.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
Baró, M. (1993). Cómo organizar una biblioteca escolar. Cuadernos de Pedagogía.