Now, I’m not the best at explaining things, so I have to use examples. I hope explaining my own thought process as I create such a color scheme will be sufficient in allowing you to better understand how to do these things yourself!
But, anyway, this is actually something a lot of people struggle with when dealing with color in general.. Sometimes, whether by circumstance or taste, it can be desirable to use colors that feel like they’re in the same “family” but it can be difficult to pull it off without creating something that looks like you just went up and down a paint sample card from Home Depot.
Now, to avoid that, let’s start off with some basic concepts in color so that we can come to a stronger understanding of how colors interact for this purpose. Let’s remember these terms:
Hue: Simply, this is what the color in question is in it’s most basic description. Sure, it might be more accurate to describe it as plum, but it’s still a purple hue, however you could still call it “a purple with a reddish hue” and now it’s something that anyone could understand without knowing what plum actually meant.
Tone and Shade: Let’s remember those paint sample cards. Tones are the lighter colors, and shades are the darker colors. Shade is often used as a catch-all for the concept of lightness and darkness in color, and tone is often used where hue is intended, but I have a fine arts background, so excuse me if I’m going to be a bit more pedantic.
Saturation: This is how rich a color is. At their most saturated, colors are bright and bold, while very unsaturated colors are all variations of gray or greige.
Temperature: How warm or cool a color is. Red, orange, and yellow are the warm hues, and Blue, purple, and green are the cool hues. Yellow greens and red violets can function as both, and as such can really be useful for attaining a level of contrast without going overboard.
These are important concepts to understand when creating any color scheme, but these are likely the most important for creating a more monochromatic look with out overdoing it.
To create such a look, you need to settle on a hue. We’ll use the Strega Trinity as an example, because she’s probably my fav up there. For her, I wanted to create a look that evoked the color of cherry blossoms, as I wanted to use rose gold accessories with her (as I’ve been obsessed with rose gold ever since finding the perfect color for it), and I felt I could pull it off with that in mind. Instead of just using the straight color of cherry blossoms, which is readily available in multiple pickers, and trying to force other colors to look nice with it, I instead broke the color down into what it is: a pale tone of red with a slightly orange hue.
Using that information, I selected my colors by playing with the factors I previously outlined. I started with her accent color (which mostly functions as the lining of her skirt, both inside and out), since I knew I wanted rose gold on her accessories. The color I use for it is really a pale orange so I knew I needed to draw back on that somewhere down the line to get the look I wanted.
Now, with the Trinity Strega skin, her primary color tends to look best when it’s dark, so I knew I needed to go in that direction for this one. Experience has also taught me that, in general, you don’t want to use really bold colors in channels that take up a lot of real estate, so I knew I needed something with low saturation. As a result, I went with this soft, rosy brown.
Her skirt and head piece are really the focal points of her design, so I knew I could get a bit more bold here, but to keep with the theme, I needed to make sure to retain some softness. So, for this one I went with a medium-dark shade of red with a slightly purple hue to help it stand out, but kept to a low saturation to prevent it from being too overpowering. By going slightly purple, I’m also able to pull the orange of her accent color more towards the pink (really, pale red) I needed her colors to evoke overall. Remember, our brains like to assign a single color to an object, even if it has multiple colors. It will either do this by going with the color that takes up the most space in high contrast scenarios, or by melding colors together when they are more similar. In the latter case, which is more relevant for this post, you can use colors that are slightly different hues than the overall color you’re aiming for and use them against each other to give the overall impression of something more towards the middle of them.
Now, her tertiary always looks best as a pale tone, so I just went with a simple cream color, and kept it near my accent. This is to ensure that it uses similar hues. Other cream colors may be too cool and create an unintended amount of contrast that can look muddy among the other colors.
Aaaand, that’s just one approach. I did things a little differently with both Zephyr and Feyarch Oberon. In the case of Zephyr, I built her scheme around the yellow/gold and paired it with extremely neutral tones so that it would pop, but the neutrals I selected all had a warm hue so that they wouldn’t feel out of place beside the yellow.
For Oberon’s Feyarch skin, I used different deep purples at varying shades and saturations. Using a single color like that starts to get you into that paint sample card look, so to break up that monotony, I threw in the tan color. Even in congruent color schemes, using a contrasting color can be helpful to prevent it from looking too same-y. The secret here to keep it from turning into a loud, high-contrast scheme is to pay close attention to the temperature and more subtle hues present in the color you use. Tans are always warm colors as they’re little more than desaturated yellows and oranges. This one in particularly however is much more close to the red end, bringing it closer to purple and giving it a cooler feeling overall, preventing it from acting as a straight compliment to the purple.
Now, I love using bright colors and contrasting schemes, but it’s a lot easier than more subtle color schemes that require an equally subtle hand. I really hope I did this in a way that makes some sense and is helpful for you in the future! Good luck! I’d love to see a submission after you’ve had time to play with my suggestions.
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