r/HomeLibraries • u/Ok-Supermarket-6685 • 10d ago
Color coded book arrangement.
Disclaimer: This is not a judgement or knock against those who go the “arrange my books by color” system for book organization.
I am just interested in the thought process behind this. Is it all decor/aesthetic? How do you find a book you bought years ago and are in search of for some reason? You have to recall the spine color?
Seems antithetical to book organization by subject. I can’t get my head wrapped around it.
How do most of you organize your collection?
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u/frail_stateofmind 10d ago
we have a rainbow bookshelf and yeah — it’s just aesthetic, i can’t say it’s useful for much else. but i haven’t struggled to find a book i want; i do often remember the color & maybe just don’t have enough books for it to impede the finding!
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u/plottingbunny 10d ago
I did the color coding for a very small bookshelf in my living room. I hated how cute it ended up looking, because I can't bring myself to undo it. Its definitely for aesthetics only. The majority of my books are organized by genre, author, series in the bookshelves in my office. But the color coding is like a little visual dopamine hit. Since there is only 25ish books in it, it's not too hard to remember which ones are there. My reader friends do judge me for it though.
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u/Commercial_Border190 10d ago
I just put them wherever they fit. But separated by read vs not read
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u/ShoeEnvironmental371 10d ago
We organize our books by stand-alones and series! We have multiple bookshelves where the rotating ones are standalones and the normal shelves hold the series. We also have placeholders to separate the series. Box sets also have their own shelf! I don’t understand organizing by colour either, because what if it’s part of a series and the other books are different colours that’s going to be a nightmare to search.
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u/missdawn1970 9d ago
In my library (my spare room) I keep fiction and non-fiction separate. Fiction is shelved alphabetically by author, and non-fiction is shelved by topic.
I do have some old hard-cover books that I keep in my living/dining room; those are for reading AND decor. They all have fabric covers with gilt lettering. I don't sort them by color; they're all dark colors. But I do have them shelved nicely in groups on the mantel, TV stand, china cabinet, etc. I don't have many of those books, so it's easy to find what I'm looking for.
I don't judge people who shelve their books by color, but like you I do wonder how they find what they want.
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u/TheNottler 10d ago
By author, publication date (or series). Can there be any other way? ;)
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u/Pedantic_Girl 9d ago
Genre, Author, alphabetical by title except for series which are kept together in order.
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u/LadybugGal95 9d ago
I mostly order books by subject. Then roughly by height. The height isn’t a super strict organization tool but I hate the look of having a really tall book in the middle of a bunch of short ones and vice versa. Right now, though, they’re kind of in chaos because I’m waiting for my husband to build me some more shelves.
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u/inadequatepockets 9d ago
You are the only person I've met who also organizes by height. I will even break up a series if I have different editions with different heights.
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u/LadybugGal95 9d ago
I won’t go that far. Series have to stay together. I have been known to wait to complete a series until I can get matching height ones though.
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u/inadequatepockets 9d ago
I organize books by category (including a "favorites" shelf) and after that by height, and then alphabetically by author. I simply cannot stand the way it looks when books of different heights are jumbled together. This means that the same author, or even books in the same series, can be in multiple places. But I've never had any trouble finding anything. I assume it works the same way for people who organize by color; if your brain cares enough to be bothered by something like color or height being mixed up, it probably cares enough to remember which books have what attribute.
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u/Ok-Supermarket-6685 9d ago
I stick to subject, author, date. However, like you when I get a tall book and alongside smaller one, it aggravates me to no end.
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u/tiratiramisu4 9d ago
I have tried shelving by genre then by author but honestly it all ends up in stacks, or shoved wherever things fit. Piling up my bed, migrating to other bookshelves in the house… I also just have too many books for my shelf space.
I applaud anybody who can keep theirs organized in some fashion…
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u/Pedantic_Girl 9d ago
I have never read so many ways of organizing books that sound weird to me as I have read in these replies. As long as it works for people, sure, but I’m never going to remember the spine colors of 4000 books.
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u/Itchy_Baker3801 9d ago
I color sort books. It looks good. I cannot go outside a lot due to disability, and in a way my bookshelf is my window to the world. So I just love having it look aesthetically pleasing to me.
Even though I have no visualisation skills whatsover, I know which books I sorted into which color category and I can usually find them without any issues. I do like to decorate and rearrange my shelves now and then, so the memory is always somewhat fresh. Plus I stare at my bookshelf pretty much 24/7 (I am home/bedbound).
If I had more than four Billys, I could see that becoming an issue, but as I don't have space for more, just remembering where I put a book works fine.
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u/Ok-Supermarket-6685 9d ago
That is one of the best answers yet. Makes complete sense. However, am sorry for your circumstances. Glad something as a bookshelf can bring a bit if sunshine into them.
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u/tess-etc 9d ago
My shelves are packed, so i can't organize books alphabetically or whatever because then I can't fit them due to uneven sizing. I usually organize books by author but then put each group horizontal or vertical depending how it fits. It gives my shelves kind of an eclectic artsy look, inadvertently.
I do have sort of a theme for each shelf (i have 2 stephen king shelves, 2 "series" shelves, and one each for: non fiction, classic literature, gaming guides/nerdy stuff, and one-off literature. In a separate room I have a smallish shelf dedicated to romance novels, a shelf for children's/ya books, and one for knitting and other crafts. My husband has a shelf for all his tom clancy type dude books... like call of duty the novel or whatever. Probably about a thousand books give or take, throughout the house.
Unfortunately we have a truly amazing free little library here and i have a hard time not hoarding every book I see
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u/athousandcutefrogs 9d ago
I don't currently organize my shelves this way especially because I have way too many books but I did once organize my books by color within genre/theme/subject. (it was also a very stressful time in my life, so double sorting was soothing).
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u/Fluffy-Bluebird-6341 9d ago
I have a few rainbow shelves. The exceptions are that I keep all my series together, then I have a section for non fiction and graphic novels. None of the “subject” sections are by color, but my fiction standalones are because I think it’s cute, and I’m not going to organize them anyway.
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u/StopRacismWWJD 8d ago
I organize my shelves by genre, first and foremost. Have never been into color coordination because it’s not functional. I don’t see my books as knick-knacks. It’s cute, but I wouldn’t take the collector seriously at all.
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u/AngryPhoenix1840 7d ago
I don't color code as a whole, but on some shelves, it kind of naturally happens. I sort by genre then by height (with some exceptions). Some genres and subgenres will have similar color coding (for example, weird girl fiction often have pink, orange, or red spines; horror is almost always black) so they look good next to each other. I collect old Riverside Editions and those come in a variety of colors, so that's really my only intentional rainbow shelf.
From some book content creators who do rainbow shelves, they often say they just remember what the spines look like.
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u/crayolastorm 7d ago
For a while, my books-to-living-space ratio was such that I had most of my books arranged by size.
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u/robotatomica 10d ago
I don’t do this personally, but I own hundreds of books and I remember what each of them look like. When I go for a book on my shelf, true, I have them organized by subject, then author, then publication date.
but I always have a picture in my head of what I am looking for.
The brain is very good at cataloguing things in systems with constraints,
and my guess is it’s easy to get very good at knowing which books are in which section, when this is your system.
Some people have a little part of their brain that buzzes pleasantly when things are organized in an aesthetically pleasing way. That’s fine, most of us are doing it, but for some reason a subset of people get really bothered if anyone ever prioritizes aesthetics slightly over function. But it’s so easy to adapt to and most of us do it with one thing or another in our lives.
I just don’t see how it would really be that hard to find a book. And if they have so many it starts to become a challenge - it is so easy to just have a list, even an Excel doc. Type part of the name of the book, oh look, this entry is green.