Back in design school we had a saying.
"Red and Green should not be seen except upon an Irish queen"

Somewhere alone the road, I also learned to break the "rules".

Anyway, I was looking at my personal site the other day I wondering, what was I thinking...

Jagged Design

I've always liked the Red ,... but should the green stay? or go ?

Funny, I was just thinking about the red/green thing earlier today. On your site they don't bother me at all. Those colours look very turn-of-the-previous-century.

i like it!

My grandma, a very smart lady, used to say 'Blue and green should never be seen, unless there's something in between'. I've never heard the one about red and green. Ihave always use reds and greens together, but am reluctant to pair up blue and green.

I think my grandma (and your design course) have programed us to ignore certain combinations, probably to our detriment.

I like the colours in your website.

See, I think all of the aforementioned "forbidden" colour combinations are sort of ... wrong. I don't think there's a "right" combination for two types of colours because there are so many variations involved.

With web design, a lot of rules can be bent because of link text colour, table text colour, and so on ... so, there's room for colour. Colour clashing, something of a dinosaur in fashion lately because "clashing is cool" in some circles, seems to be dying in general because people are less afraid of colour.

In shorter short, I think that we should use any colour combinations we want, especially these ones that aren't "supposed" to happen, and the words "wrong" and "right" should rarely be employed. Colour is not objective.

For example -- something I thought was 'wrong' for the longest time was orange and purple, especially on the muted end:

Red and green should not be seen on B&W Photography because they look very similar...

I think the background red and the foreground green look terrific on your website. The texture and shading of the background red is beautiful, particularly with the white space above it. But for some reason, I don't quite like the red lettering on your buttons. I think the roll-over gold on the buttons is better, but it's a bit hard to read. And I really like the color of the visited links.

I think it's one of the most sphisticated websites I've seen!

Wow, this is interesting. Ironically, my whole color scheme/palette for my freelance biz is just that... dark red with yellow/lime green. I really like the combination its kinda daring I think.

"In the world of color, I’ve found that there’s no such thing as ‘no’ in the world of color."

In the world of words, that's one too many uses of "In the world of color". :-)

I too have thought about this in detail recently and came to the conclusion that its utter rubbish.

Red + Green colour schemes work great. My design service website: www.base6design.com is currently being updated with such a scheme.

It was originally a rather dull sky blue.

Another case in point is the humble Rose:

An icon in the world of botany and loved by women the world over.

Red + Green colour schemes are great. Just because someone came up with a clever rhyme which contradicted this doesn't mean we should be afraid to use these colours together.

There's a lot of reds and a lot of greens, some of them don't fit with each other, because of a too strong contrat, but but it should'nt be a golden rule.

One more argument in favor of this combination :

Thanks for the great feedback guys ...

deliquescence, thanks for the suggestion of of using greys to tone down the contrast.
And thanks for all the example pallets!

GreenMyEyes, I think you are right regarding the right hand links (buttons), I think thats what is bugging me.

FuzzyOtter, Thanks for confirming that I have the look I'm heading for.
I think that I will alter a few of the graphics and pull the site more towards the steam punk genre.

I've always found there to be a bit of a void in colour theory related websites, looks like colourlovers is filling it fast.

At design school I was taught all the "Rules", but I was also taught that I should also break the rules and I was strongly encouraged to do so. I was far from the best student though, which is why I do more development than design. Still like to keep the design skills sharp though.

P.S. Go KIWI ! :D

Red and Green should not be seen. Blue and Green...

This sounds like a nice rule for beginning designers working in media. I do like the palette samples. I don't have much of an eye for picking color sets, but I can appreciate them. My suspicion is the rule is based on color blindness--Red/Green and Blue//Yellow being the most common. (Although I certainly get ill from too many harsh Christmas red/greens.)

My son (and some other family members) have trouble with red, green, and blue. They would have trouble reading the text on the website. They simply can't see the shades well. Where we see 5 colors in the palette, they would see 2 or 3. I would suggest keeping the rule in mind for those that can't see colors when layering for visibility.

Hi there,
Iám a dutch graphic designer, and if we speak about colors, then there are no rules even black and white are colors aldo ,all mine profs. at school sad now B&W are no colors,
So if B&W are no colors hoswe come that we can see them, so ill think that every combination is possible, so dont have a discussion about taste.

My 15 steps palette...
LeTienLeMien

SomeFever+Alchemy+TheAntidote=
TheAlchemist

As many above has shown, one quick look around colourlovers, or nature for that matter, should dispel any green/red issues. I think the trouble is with that specific green and red that say "Xmas" to western culture. You know, "santa hat" plus "xmas tree" ?

@bethmallory: I'm definitely with you on that. It really only appears to be with text/foreground combinations using true red and true green. Red and green can look amazing together.