Colour

Putting colours together

There are hundreds of rules about combining colours and hundreds of recipes for producing colour schemes. Some of the simpler ideas are a useful starting point for the novice, but I know of no successful artist or designer who blindly follows any system.

Simple rules that are more or less useful include:

• Use only as many hues as you need.
• Desaturated tertiary colours usually go together.

Conventional colour schemes include:

• monochromatic
• analogous
• complementary
• split complementary
• double complementary
• triadic

Observations

• Even within these formalised systems, the particular choice of hues may depend on meanings assigned to the colours by fashion or convention.
• I was brought up with the slogan blue and green should never be seen. The theory of colour harmony is littered with arbitrary and unhelpful rules like this.
• I’m sceptical about the large and often expensive colour scheme industry. You’re more likely to make better choices of colours for yourself, working purely intuitively, unless an advisor has a very thorough understanding of what you are trying to achieve.