How do I get my chests in Minecraft to face the way I want?

While making a storage room for all my mined cobblestone from my quarry, I came across a rather cosmetic problem with my chests: not all of them face me.

I realized that chests only face towards me when they have a block blocking it from behind, but it is rather ugly:

So, how do I make them all face me? Is it possible to do it without placing a solid block behind it?

EDIT: Just FYI, they will turn back when I remove the block behind it.

Solution 1:

An option that may be more or less drastic, depending on how much work you've already done: Rearrange your storage room so all the chests face west.

The front of the chest (with the latch) will face away from any adjacent solid blocks, or face west if placed independent of other blocks. The viewpoint of players has no effect on the orientation of placed chests. —Minecraft Wiki

Since these are double chests they only have two "choices" of which way to face. If that choice doesn't include west (i.e., you've got them facing north-south), then it's probable that arranging them all to face south will have the same effect. That's assuming that the chests face west when they're alone due to the south/west rule.

Solution 2:

You should be able to remove that dirt block and it will be fine.

You could edit the back of the chest texture so it matches the front.

The other option is to place halfsteps behind. This would not look too bad.