Wedding Colour Ideas

Ideas for Wed­ding Colours

The chances are if you’re read­ing this post you’ve not got a clear idea that you are com­mit­ted to.  If you have a strong affin­ity for a color or colours there’s noth­ing wrong with going with that.  Per­son­ally I don’t have a clue what my favorite color is.  So where to find inspiration?

Sea­sons

Sea­sons are an easy one.  Your wed­ding will obvi­ously have a date and that date will be at a time of year.  If it’s on the cusp, then just go with whichever you prefer;)

Sum­mer Wed­ding color inspiration

Sum­mer

If your wedding’s in the sum­mer you could go for bright colours: think flow­ers and the colours you see.  Bright pinks, blues, greens and yel­lows.  These will all do very well.  When you think sum­mer you think sun­shine (or at least hope for it!) and beau­ti­ful blue skies.

Noth­ing says sum­mer like the eng­lish coun­try side, or signs in a coun­try lane…

Autumn Colours for Weddings

Autumn

Autumn is most obvi­ously asso­ci­ated with the fall so think rich reds, yel­low, oranges and browns of the falling leaves, think New Eng­land in the fall.   You can also go for desat­u­rated ver­sions of nat­ural colours like green and blue. Think what these colours look like in the mist.

Tus­cany book­let invi­ta­tion — impress your guests, though prob­a­bly not over break­fast. Does any­one get morn­ing post any more?

Win­ter Wed­ding color inspiration

Win­ter

Win­ter can go at least two ways.  You can either reflect the (some­times) plung­ing tem­per­a­tures choos­ing cool tones like blue and white.  Or you can go with the warmth of the fires inside people’s homes (at least his­tor­i­cally) and the opu­lence of Christ­mas, dark reds, golds, pur­ples etc.

A fresh light blue great for win­ter (and spring to)

Spring Wed­ding Colour Inspiration

Spring

Spring is very like sum­mer but fresher or pas­tel ver­sions of these colours.  Life is com­ing and on the up but it’s new and more del­i­cate at this time of year.

Book­let invi­ta­tion in mint green, great for a spring wedding

Other Sources of Colour Inspiration

If not the sea­sons you might want to look at what you like: this could be a favorite brand.  If you think of Tiffany it is very obvi­ously asso­ci­ated with a spe­cific shade of blue. Look at signs or pack­ag­ing. Design­ers have found colours that work together and you can take advan­tage of these.  Here are some exam­ples of color schemes taken from com­pany and organ­i­sa­tion web­sites includ­ing the well-known and the not quite so well known.

Exam­ples of a color schemes from websites

Pho­tos that you’ve taken can also be way to look for color ideas.  You may want to go for inspi­ra­tion from trav­els in exotic coun­tries or use inspi­ra­tion from your favorite spot in this country.

An obser­va­tory in Hawaii

Here’s an exam­ple from my own blog.  If you’ve ever used an art pro­gram of any type it’s the color sam­ple tool.  It looks like a pipette in a most pro­grams!   Some tip top web­sites (not sure why I’m using tip top – don’t say that phrase!)

• Pure color inspi­ra­tion https://kuler.adobe.com
• Wed­ding color inspi­ra­tion http://www.theperfectpalette.com/
• Seeds – for plants, flo­ral and not plant  colour inspi­ra­tion http://design-seeds.com/ (very glad Sabine at g lily told me about this site)
• Take colours from images in a less fun but more easy man­ner http://www.colorhunter.com/

Ways to use colours

Keep it sim­ple and choose one colour, many sup­pli­ers can work with a spec­i­fied color.  You will know all your colours match as they’re all the same.  Things rarely look bad when this option is taken as things look uni­form and orderly. The dead sim­ple approach is to use sim­i­lar colours.  You could use lighter and darker ver­sions of a color to com­pli­ment it or colours either side of it on a colour wheel.  E.g. for green you could use a more yel­low green and a more blue green. Choose a color and then find the oppo­site colouron the color wheel This handy web­site is great for that.  The Smor­gas­board — Not a well-known term for color col­lec­tions but I like using it when there is lots of colours in play!  If you look at the web­site in the pre­vi­ous link you could clas­sify the triad, tetrad and accented ana­logic as those.

How to use colours

You may be inter­ested in my attempt at explain­ing ombre if you click ombre and say olé as you do so.

Bring­ing it all together…

So you’ve got some color ideas. Here some final thoughts for tying it together.

• Pas­tel colours gen­er­ally work well together and make for an easy way to use colours that match
• Bright colours can be a lot of fun.  Just because wed­dings fea­ture lots of white they are also a cel­e­bra­tion and remem­ber white can be the bright­est color of all*
• Lots of bright colours can be hard to bal­ance so using some pas­tel colours with them can make it eas­ier to match.
• Colours that are seen together in the world around you nor­mally make sense when drawn together in other circumstances.

So have fun and let your guests have a visual treat!

*to see a sur­face as white a sur­face must reflect all the colours of the spec­trum into your eye.  There­fore being bright as in more light!

Inter­ested in the Designs or bespoke invi­ta­tions and sta­tionery seen here?  Here’s the where to find more on these:

• The Sum­mer title was made from our Modeno design — click to see this very fun and funky design.
• The sum­mer sta­tionery exam­ple was from our ‘Way to Go’ design - click to see more of this slice of the Eng­lish Coun­try­side.  Also looks quite some bits of Wales just over the bor­der from Gloucestershire ;)
• The Autumn Title uses our Ombre design — not on the main site yet but read more about it and Ombre here
• The autumn exam­ple is a book­let invi­ta­tion from our Tus­cany range.  Again click to see!
• The Win­ter title is made from our Natale design.  Natale means Christ­mas in Ital­ian I believe.
• The Win­ter exam­ple is Capri, a sophis­ti­cated design.  Prob­a­bly no need but click to see more of it.
• The Spring title was from our Spring table name blog piece.  Read about wed­ding table names for spring here.  It’s also very like our Cam­pa­nia range.
• The spring exam­ple is Tri­este in Mint green.

Thanks for tak­ing the time to read this piece.  Would love to hear about any ways you might have found color inspi­ra­tion or if you have any ques­tions ask below and if you’re look­ing for great wed­ding sta­tionery please check out the main Artemis Sta­tionery web­site.  There’s also plenty of advice on the blog AS Invites. All images in this post (but only this post and not the titles or side­bars etc) are the copy­right of Artemis Stationery.