Read up on tips for how to select the best wedding colors for your special day.

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Understanding How Colors Work Together

Picking a main color for your wedding isn’t the end of the story. Once you’ve chosen the primary color for your wedding color scheme, you will need to choose one or two accent colors that work well with it in order to get a balanced, beautiful palette. Knowing which colors work well together and which ones will clash or compete with each other is crucial.

A particular shade of yellow may look wonderful with a soft blue, but look garish and unattractive with a bolder, brighter blue. Both the shade and the intensity of a color has to be considered. The shade of a color refers to whether it leans more to blues or reds on the color wheel, with the intensity of the color refers to how dark or saturated a color is. For instance, a pale, celery green is less intense than a dark, forest green. A purple that leans toward red will look far different than a cool, blue-tinged purple. Purple is, in fact, one of the few colors that can be either warm or cool depending on the shade you choose.

It you’re having trouble choosing two colors that work well together, consider getting a color wheel like the one below:

You can find one at most home remodeling or design stores. If you can’t get an actual color wheel, consider picking up some paint chips to work with. These are great fun to mix and match in order to see which colors work well together and which ones don’t.

You can also check out the sight www.ColorSchemer.com, where you can put together an almost infinite variety of color schemes and try out color schemes designed by professionals. Try typing in “autumn” or “beach” and you’ll get dozens of wonderful color schemes to choose from.

The color wheel divides color along the spectrum. By learning how to “read” a color wheel, you can find great color schemes that naturally work well together.

Monochromatic

Monochromatic color schemes use several shades of the same color. The colors will simply be varying shades of the same color. For example, you could choose aqua as your color and use three different shades, from a pale, watery aqua to a deeper, almost teal shade. This can get tricky; however, so be sure you stay with either all cool shades or all warm shades of a color if you are going monochromatic.

Complimentary

Contrasting color schemes are probably the most popular for weddings. Contrasting colors are opposite each other on a color wheel. The color opposite yellow is purple, so yellow and purple could be your wedding colors. If you want something a bit more subtle or you want more than two colors, look to the immediate left and right of the same color to choose two shades to work with your main color. These are sometimes called split complimentary colors. In this case, you would use a slightly bluer purple and a slightly reddish purple. To emphasize the contrast, keep one purple lighter and the other darker.

Triads

Triad colors are three colors that are equally spaced away from each other on the color wheel. Imagine a triangle on your color wheel and use the colors at each point. One example might be a green-blue shade with apricot and purple. For the most success with a triad color scheme, choose one color to be your main color and use the other two colors in small doses to add punch while avoiding a rainbow effect.

Analogic Colors

These are three colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. For instance, periwinkle, royal blue and a deeper navy blue. When using analogous colors, many brides choose three very similar colors, then go to another color that is opposite the mid-range color to find an accent color. Try green, lighter green and a deeper green for your analogic colors, then accent with a bold pink such as fuchsia.

Neutrals – More Than Beige

When designing a color scheme for your wedding, keep in mind that some shades can either be considered colors, or used as neutrals. If brown is a major color, limit yourself to two other shades is accents to avoid to many colors. For instance, a pale yellow and a warm peach shade. But if the brown is to be used simply as an accent, it can be relegated to the role of a neutral and you can broaden your other color choices.

Colors that are commonly considered neutrals if used as accents include: brown, taupe, cream, ivory, white, silver and gold. Any of these can give you depth without competing with your main color choices. Use them sparingly, however, for the most impact.