how to choose a color scheme for your wedding day

Don’t be afraid of color!

The color palette is a big part of a wedding! Colors are a way for couples to bring their personalities into the day, and help set the tone for the vibe of the celebration. They have a huge influence on the overall aesthetic of the day, coming into play in the stationary, décor, florals, bridesmaids’ dresses, and more!

If you’re feeling intimidated by what colors to choose, this post is for you!

This decision should be fun and exciting, but over the years of chatting with my clients I’ve learned that it’s a stressful part of wedding planning for many brides and grooms. This surprised me at first (I loved choosing colors for my wedding), but I realized that my background in art gives me an understanding of color that not everyone possesses. I’m going to share some of that knowledge with you here so that you can fearlessly choose your wedding colors!

I see how it can be overwhelming – there are so many buzzwords and ways to describe colors, it’s hard to know where to start! We could go neutral or bold, there are warm colors and cool colors, jewel tones or pastels, and seasonal appropriateness to take into consideration! There are SO MANY stunning color combinations out there, the possibilities are endless! With so many choices, what to pick!?

A lot of people get so overwhelmed or confused that they just give up, and go with something simple to play it safe. Don’t get me wrong, if pale pinks with navy, or elegant white with greenery is a look you LOVE, then go for it! I’m a big fan and am not throwing shade on simple or traditional color palettes, I just don’t want anyone to choose them because they’re too afraid to do something different!

To simplify this decision-making process, I suggest that you start with ONE base color and go from there. You can choose this color because it’s your favorite, because it’s seasonally appropriate, or from some other source of inspiration, but it will be helpful to have that base to go from. So once you have your base color, where to go from there?

To help with that decision, let’s brush up on the basics. This is a color wheel:

 We’ve all seen a version of this at some point, but for some of us it’s been a while. We have the primary colors (red, blue, and yellow), and mixing two of these gives us the secondary colors (green, orange, and purple) and then the tertiary colors give us the colors when primary and secondary colors are combined.

We can learn a lot just from looking at this. Colors that are next to each other are called “analogous” and this is an easy way to pick a color scheme, as analogous colors look great together!

This also gives us an idea of the warm colors which are mostly on the left (reds, oranges, and yellows) and cool colors which are mostly on the right (greens, blues, and purples). Yellow-green and red-violet are right in between, and could go either way in my opinion.

Colors that are opposite from each other are called “complimentary”, which means there is the greatest amount of contrast between them. This can be a plus because they make each other “pop” but also too much of this contrast can be overwhelming on the eyes.

For wedding color scheme purposes, instead of pairing complementary colors I’d suggest pairing triadic colors (these are 1/3 of the color wheel away from each other) to get a vibrant color pop that isn’t too much. Blues paired with reds is one of my favorites of these combinations! For my own wedding, my bridesmaids wore mixed shades of blue, and the florals were in the red family. Here we are!

You might be thinking that you don’t see many of these hues in the color wheel above! So where do jewel tones and pastels come into play? There are also various shades of each color, which means how light (how much white is added) or dark (how much black is added) to the original color. Jewel tones are basically darker versions of the pure colors above, while pastels are lighter versions. Tones like baby blue and navy blue are essentially different shades of the color blue. Various shades of one color is called a “monochromatic” scheme, and this is also a great option for weddings! We see a lot of this in the mismatched bridesmaids dress trend that (thankfully) seems to be here to stay! To help illustrate this and expand on the original color wheel, here’s another graphic:

Any slice of this pie makes up a monochromatic color scheme! You can widen a slice to incorporate several colors and you have an analogous theme. Anything between two slices up to a third of the above wheel is a good range to include in an analogous palette. So now that we have some basic information, let’s choose a starting point color and run through our options!

Let’s go with tried and true wedding color: maroon. Where is that in the color wheel!? Just look to wherever the hues appear the most similar, which is somewhere in the area of dark red.

So we have the monochromatic option – which would involve colors in that same slice of the pie – dark reds, to red, although way down to light pink! There are lots of ways to do this and it’s hard to go wrong with a monochromatic scheme. Whether you choose bridesmaids dresses on the dark or light end of the spectrum (or a mix), florals and decor in any combination of maroon, pops of bright red and pink, and light pinks and whites will look great.

We could also go for an analogous scheme which gives us several options. We could pair the maroon with the colors on both sides of it (deep oranges and purplish reds) or we could go more toward the direction of the warm colors and aim for yellows, oranges, and reds. Alternatively we could go the opposite way, and choose pair our dark red with deep purplish-red shades, and violets.

We also talked about aiming for colors 1/3 of the wheel away from each other to get more vibrancy and color pops, so for maroon this could be around yellows or the blues. If you choose one of these, you’d want maroon to remain your main color and incorporate yellows or blues as an accent (or vice versa).

Hopefully these basic aspects of color theory make everyone feel more confident in their ability to choose a beautiful color palette (and it can’t hurt for home decor or interior design choices either)!