I love books, and I love books as decor, but I’ll admit I haven’t always been the biggest fan of our bookcase. It’s not bad… it does the job, but it’s a little boring and I don’t know, a little too IKEA in the not-so-awesome sense. So when we recently moved it out into a big, prominent space in our hall, the bookcase’s general blah-ness started to grate on me a little.
So what’s a girl to do with no money for a fancy new piece that could speak for itself? I color-coordinated the crap out of that boring bookshelf to make it stand out all on it’s own.

The whole thing was a bit of an undertaking, but not nearly as crazy as you might think. Here are a few steps and tips I used to make it go as quickly as possible. (I think I was done in around half an hour.)
BORING BOOKCASE

1 // First I made a pile of all of the black books, and another of all of the white books. Since they were coming up last, I wouldn’t need them for a while, and that cleared enough space on the shelves to get moving.
2 // Then I started at the top and worked my way down… moving with the rainbow. ROY-G-BIV (red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet). Then black, then white.
3 // When I ran into trouble with the height of some books, I just stacked them the other way, like below…
NOT SO BORING BOOKCASE

And that’s it! I think the secret here is just not to obsess too much. The colors don’t have to be a perfect ombré fade, the different shades will mix and match nicely together in one big lump as long as they’re color-coded — same with the different heights. Just throw them all together and see what comes out. Then if you feel like the arrangement needs a tweak or two, you can do it at the end.