apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

While I'm sure it's very nice to look at, I think it would drive me crazy trying to find a specific book by trying to remember what color the spine was...
...I tend to organize by subject matter: Travel books in one area, architecture books in another, etc.

I LOVE THIS!!!

I'm probably in the minority here, because I will not only admit I love this, but I will profess that I love this. It's not just a good idea, it's executed very nicely.

if only i had that kind of space... i'm doing that with my books, but on a much smaller scale :(

holy buckets, that's awesome! I'd never have enough books (let alone colored-spine books) to do this because I hate the clutter, but this is beautiful.

only people who don't love their books do that. it's disrespectful to all those trilogies that came in red, green and yellow covers. and dictionaries of different languages each coming in their own color. they belong together, not seperated because of different color. racism in the bookcase...

This drives me insane. It looks like a paint store and would be impossible to find something. I'd much prefer a jumble of colours that were organized either by theme or alphabetically.

Can someone who does this please explain how you locate specific titles once they have been randomized in this fashion. It's difficult to believe you'd need to memorise the colour of every book you own in order to lay hands on it again.

aad- that's a pretty big assumption to make. I happen to love my books and to love the way they look when organized by color. To each his own- thinking that all red books get along is no better or worse than thinking all dictionaries get along!

and it isn't impossible to find anything if you have a strong visual memory of the book cover. I am more likely to remember the color of some books than I am the author so the system works for me...

I kind of hate this trend of shelving by color. For a small amount of books it's okay I guess, but for a collection of the size pictured it's crazy. But then I catalog books for a living so it's kind of a horror to me. Melvil Dewey is turning over in his grave I'm sure.

sorry cq - didn't mean to offend you. it's just this idea of having to memorize if german dictionaries came in red or blue that would drive me insane. and then, greek is orange, and latin is green. and dutch to english is blue, but english to dutch is red. it's mess up my life immensely... ;-)

Does anyone have a guess to what the shelving is?

"only people who don't love their books do that"

That's really not true.

I absolutely LOVE my books (I am a book designer by profession, and an avid reader and collector of books), and I have mine arranged this way. I have never had a problem finding one I'm looking for (perhaps this is because I am a book designer; I'm very sensitive to the appearance of each book, including the spine), and it doesn't diminish the meaning of them in any way, shape or form.

Methods of organization and memory are very different from person to person -- there's no right way or wrong way to categorize things, especially in one's own home.

Personally, I am coveting the shelves! Although I have nothing like that ceiling....

You know, having "too many" books might make memorizing what color spine you're looking for, and easier to have large categories of books, so they're organized by subject. But I have a small shelf, and a small amount of books that I keep as my own (check my profile for the link to the other thread about lots of books vs. few), and for the most part, recognizing which book I am looking for is something I do almost completely by color. I don't have enough books to make a real "show" of organizing by color, so usually they are organized by size, then subject.

correction "...you're looking for -more difficult,-"

I've been a librarian for eight years now, and when I worked with books daily I was amazed at how easy it was to memorize (generally) the location of 20,000 or so books.

Different people use different associative webs to remember - changing unrelated things like close by wall art threw off one librarian, and I don't see why color shouldn't be as effective a mnemonic as something as arbitrary as subject. It helps to read, touch, and look at the books - but once that happens the rest seems like subconscious magic.

Incidentally, for closed stacks book size is the predominant physical ordering logic.

Visual people (the ones most likely to appreciate the aesthetics of books arranged by color) will easily remember the color of a book. When my friends laugh at my book-arranging system, I close my eyes and ask them to name a book...I never fail to know the right color.

To color-code or not to color-code - haven't we had this same discussion several times before here on AT?

Eccentric Scholar has done his color coding well, though.

I have a great idea. During print they should color code the spines to correlate with the authors last name. Aa being bright white Ab being a little less bright and so on. Then the books can be in alphabetical order and color coded! heh heh heh.

nope, not a big fan of the color organized library. to each their own though.

Lovely, this is a truly fun idea that’s been beautifully executed.

Really, anyone that can't locate their own books in their own shelves in their own home must not reference their own books very often. I agree with Easyenough, keeping track of a large quantity of items you regularly reference, no matter the organizational method is easy. If you can't locate your own books without a map, then I suspect those books being displayed are probably just for show or as a remembrance of a good read.

Another thought is, if the book you are looking for is blue, even if you remember it's blue, it might take a while to skim that shelf and find it, even alphabetically, or remembering it's the second shelf from the left. If your books are arranged categorically, you can be like me, you can spot the book that's blue out of the bunch, even if they're not arranged by subject. What I think is a little weird is having accumulated the right proportion of books in every color to make this look work.

I don't think I like it. It looks too regimented and fussy to me. I know lots of people love this trend, but I just don't find it as appealing as a nice jumble of books.

What shelving is that?