Color-coded bookshelves: Are they “legit”?
(Short answer: Depends!)
Happy Sunday! This weekend I finally finished my second of four decorative accents (one of my home-related goals for August).
After I came out of my washi tape haze, I set my sights on another design trend: Color-coded bookshelves.
It all started after I arranged some of our DVDs by color and my boyfriend casually remarked, “Hey, you should try that with the books.” So obviously I spent the next hour spiraling down a black hole of anxiety, wondering if I could possibly recreate one of these Pinterest beauties.
In my heart of hearts, I understand that the arrangement of a bookshelf is a ridiculous thing to get stressed about. AND YET HERE WE ARE.
I couldn’t help but worry:
When should the books be vertical, and when horizontal?
What if I don’t have enough fun knick-knacks to decorate?
What if we only have one green book? ONE?!
What if it looks all rainbow-y? (Not that I don’t like rainbows!!)
Anyway, I eventually just put on a podcast and went to work. And here’s how it turned out:
(Please excuse the weird books on the end. They’re placeholder bookends until we get real ones.)
We bought this bookshelf for $80 on Craigslist (and here are some tips on how to get the best Craigslist deals). It’s actually two separate units, so we decided to angle them in a corner to make it look even more unique.
So, is a color-coded bookshelf “legit”?
When I was arranging the bookshelf, some of my worries came true: I had one random hot pink book and one random silver book (THANKS, TFIOS), not to mention an entire shelf of bland tan books. And then there was the handful of multi-colored books that seemed to throw off the whole thing.
In the end, was I able to recreate a Pinterest-worthy color-coded bookshelf? Maybe not. But I’d also decided that when it came to my apartment, “legit” didn’t mean impressive -- it meant functional, personal, and social.
Functional. A lot of people say color-coded bookshelves aren’t functional because you can’t immediately find the book you’re looking for. However, I’m not frequently running to consult a book I’ve already read. And it’s not like I have so many books that taking a second to search would be that big of a hassle. Plus, I like browsing.
Personal. Because it’s so colorful, the bookshelf definitely draws my eye. Which means I’m more likely to see the things that make me happy, like my Harry Potter books. Also, the more time that goes by, the more I actually like the imperfections. It makes it feel homier and well-used, which is definitely the tone I’d like to set in my apartment.
Social. I’m not sure if 'social’ honestly applies to a bookshelf. But I did have a friend over yesterday, and she definitely complimented and went over to look at it. So, that’s a plus?
So, yes, a color-coded bookshelf ended up being “legit” enough for my needs. However, I can totally see why it wouldn’t be for everyone.
4 tips to color code your bookshelf.
Here’s what I’ve learned, in case you’d like to try it as well:
Color arrangement: You can obviously do any color arrangement you want, but I did light to dark, with cool colors on the left side and warm colors on the right side. This felt like a natural gradient to me (which is something I wanted) without being too rainbow-y (not that I don’t like rainbows!!).
Color classification: Overall, I was surprised how many books of each color I had. But then again, I made my fair share of manipulations. For instance, I only had three purple books, so I just combined them with the blue. And my dreaded multi-color books actually turned out to be my greatest asset, since I could just put them wherever they were needed.
Height arrangement: I tried arranging the books (a) by height and (b) by color gradient. We eventually decided that arranging by height looked better (this may simply be due to orientation of our bookshelves). I also think mixing up the color gradient contributed to that “lived-in” feel that I liked so much.
Decorations: A lot of Pinterest bookshelves have fun knick-knacks and decorations. However, we had so many books (in relation to the size of our bookshelf) that we decided too many decorations would just look busy -- and we really wanted the focus to be on the books. If you’re bookshelf-shopping and decorations are important to you, consider factoring that into the size of the bookshelf you get.
Do you have a color-coded bookshelf? Any tips to add? What should my third decorative accent be?