10 Color Combos You Never Thought Would Work
As a budding aesthete, I had the great misfortune of attending a high school whose team colors were blue and orange. It was bad enough seeing this rancid combination on the cheerleaders’ uniforms. But when some color-blind booster decided to paint the hallways blue and orange, it was the worst attack on education since the Scopes Trial.
Some color combinations just seem like they couldn’t possibly work. Blue and orange. Pink and blue. Pink and green. (Hell — pink and anything.) And yet … they can. As you’ll see in the photos that follow, it’s not so much the colors themselves, but the shades you use and how you combine them that make the difference. Even blue and orange can work together if you do it right.
It turns out there are no bad color combinations. Just color combinations done badly.
Blue and orange. Well, shut my mouth and call me Shirley. Here are my old school colors, in all their glory. Well, not exactly. The blue is a bit paler; the orange is a bit browner. Blue and brown work well together, so when you bring out those undertones in neighboring colors, it works.
Sure, the walls are blue and the furniture is orange. But notice the way the designer covered the floor and the bottom half of the wall in brown, so the chair has a much more orange-friendly backdrop. The orange and white curtains serve as a bridge between the two colors. Very clever!
Here’s another variation on orange and blue that works like gangbusters. The secret: The blue is demure and definitely plays second fiddle to the orange. To make odd color combinations work, try varying the intensities of each hue.
More about 10 Color Combos You Never Thought Would Work
Some color combinations just seem like they couldn’t possibly work. Blue and orange. Pink and blue. Pink and green. (Hell — pink and anything.) And yet … they can. As you’ll see in the photos that follow, it’s not so much the colors themselves, but the shades you use and how you combine them that make the difference. Even blue and orange can work together if you do it right.
It turns out there are no bad color combinations. Just color combinations done badly.
Blue and orange. Well, shut my mouth and call me Shirley. Here are my old school colors, in all their glory. Well, not exactly. The blue is a bit paler; the orange is a bit browner. Blue and brown work well together, so when you bring out those undertones in neighboring colors, it works.
Sure, the walls are blue and the furniture is orange. But notice the way the designer covered the floor and the bottom half of the wall in brown, so the chair has a much more orange-friendly backdrop. The orange and white curtains serve as a bridge between the two colors. Very clever!
Here’s another variation on orange and blue that works like gangbusters. The secret: The blue is demure and definitely plays second fiddle to the orange. To make odd color combinations work, try varying the intensities of each hue.
More about 10 Color Combos You Never Thought Would Work
