Here we report a rapid and scalable bottom-up technique for layer-by-layer (LBL) assembling near-infrared-active colloidal photonic crystals consisting of large (>= 1 mu m) silica microspheres. By combining a new electrostatics-assisted colloidal transferring approach with spontaneous colloidal crystallization at an air/water interface, we have demonstrated that the crystal transfer speed of traditional Langmuir-Blodgett-based colloidal assembly technologies can be enhanced by nearly 2 orders of magnitude. Importantly, the crystalline quality of the resultant photonic crystals is not compromised by this rapid colloidal assembly approach. They exhibit thickness-dependent near-infrared stop bands and welldefined Fabry-Perot fringes in the specular transmission and reflection spectra, which match well with the theoretical calculations using a scalar-wave approximation model and Fabry-Perot analysis. This simple yet scalable bottom-up technology can significantly improve the throughput in assembling large area, multilayer colloidal crystals, which are of great technological importance in a variety of optical and non-optical applications ranging from all-optical integrated circuits to tissue engineering. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.