How do you make a bookshelf full of finance, math, business and economics books interesting?

Well, you can’t. Sorry. BUT, you can make them look more attractive! (and dust that sucker at the same time.)

I was flipping through the latest JEZEBEL magazine and saw a feature on Atlanta interior designer Lauren Dott’s home, and she had these stacks of books on her dresser that were arranged by color. Now, her books were very nice, coffee table-style design books that already look fabulous; so I decided to adapt this little trick and see if it worked with the boy’s academia literature collection in the IKEA bookshelf in our bedroom:

Yes, those are South Park figurines.

And then I tackled my own mini collection of books in our hallway bookshelf:

Interestingly, the arrangement shows off the rainbow more with the “serious” books, probably because they stick with a solid color and don’t go all crazy on the spine design. My books have a subtler effect, but I like how both turned out. I even enjoy the height variation; some people arrange their books by height but this combination of color arrangement plus extreme height variation makes the books feel almost sculptural.

Or, maybe that’s just me and some of you are thinking, this girl gets way too excited about arranging her books by color. Which is probably true. But it is nice to wake up and see a mini rainbow