A customer of mine recently suggested a new color scheme for my products, which happens now and then, but this time caught my attention. She said she would like to see something in purple, orange, and green–because those are the colors she is using in her wedding.
I have never had great success with purple. Paired with a neutrals like tan, gray and white, it’s not bad. But with orange and green? That’s a lot of color.
So I thought it would be a nice challenge to come up with a color scheme based on those colors and here’s what I’ve got.
Orange and Green can work well together, opposing cool and warm colors, so long as there’s enough yellow in them to coordinate with each other. Too much red in the orange or too much blue in the green and they don’t work as well.
I based this scheme largely on this photograph I found on Flickr by John Dalkin.
credit: John Dalkin
This blend of purple is beautiful. I pulled three shades of each color in the leaves and flowers + some of the dark pink shade at the tips for an accent.
My customer then forwarded me a link to this photo from Organic Elements which is equally beautiful as a man-made arrangement.
credit: Organic Elements
For more inspiration I called on some friends to join the challenge at Dribbble. I posted my color scheme above and asked them to make something from it. Anything visual, to give a better idea of how the colors play together. They did well!
Color Spiral by Shawn Grimes + Abstract Colors by Jesse J. Anderson
To play with the colors a little more, I decided to design a set of patterns in this color scheme. In doing so, I found the need to tweak the colors a little more and ended up with a slightly new color scheme. I also broke the colors into groups of only two colors at a time.
purple + green
purple + orange
orange + green
So here’s the new color scheme based on the work in action.
