Christmas Colours- Using Festive Colours Effectively
With Christmas around the corner, there is no better time than now to start thinking about creative festive patterns. Some designers can create Christmas patterns in the spring, ready to upload to print-on-demand or pitch to a company and for many this is how it should be- creating seasonal christmas prints way ahead of time.
Though I’ll be honest, I’m rarely in the mood to be drawing Christmas trees and reindeer when it’s sunny outside. That’s just me and my personal preference, so if you like to be super organised and have your Christmas designs ready and finished by the spring, then go for it! You’ll be ahead of most of us and will have designs ready to send off or upload. Though just know that for a lot for us designers (me included), we find it really hard if it’s not Christmas when we’re designing!
Christmas Colours
The colours below show the main traditional Christmas colours that we associate with the festive period. There are many colours you can use for a Christmas pattern, so don’t be put off if your go-to colours aren’t shown! I have some alternative colour palettes you can use in your festive patterns further below in this post, so keep reading to find out what these are…
Other colours that evoke the feeling of Christmas are gold, silver and blue. Note that the colour blue doesn’t have to be a light blue as shown below, but can be a dark blue, turquoise, teal blue or similar.
Pattern Examples
In the example patterns below, you’ll notice some commonalities such as the colour red. Red is probably the main essential colour that a lot of Christmas patterns have other than a snowflake or winter pattern (blues/white).
Example No.1
In the example pattern no.1 below there are a lot of cheerful, happy colours such as yellow, red, orange, turquoise. The colour red is very prominent and provides the essential Christmas colours, which together with the festive motifs, means that the pattern is a great one. you can see the colour palette used below.
Example No.2
In pattern example no.2 below, you can see lots of red, white, navy and green as the dominant colours. Followed by orange, brown x3, black, light beige/cream and darker green. The colour palettes used for this pattern is shown below.
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Example No.3
In this pattern, the colour palette is more limited with 7 colours, but still includes red and white. The other dominant colour is the background turquoise colour. This pattern has used pink, which is a great Christmas colour and can look very effective in festive prints.
Example No.4
In this last example, again has a limited colour palette of 7 colours and has used red in the design. There are 3 blue colours, a brown and a mustard yellow which could be used as a gold colour to add elegance and luxury. The background colour is a light beige/pink colour which creates great contrast against the stronger more saturated colours.
What do all the pattern examples have in common?
They all feature the colour red!
The motifs tie in the feeling of the Christmas & festive period used so compliment and reinforce the intended mood/feeling with:
leaves
baubles
snowmen
reindeer
starbursts
berries
stars
fireplace
trees
hot beverages
branches
mistletoe
hats
candy canes
hearts
diamonds
lights
gloves
snowflakes
Including the right motifs and colours is essential to be able to create pattern designs that not only resonate the intended mood/feeling i.e it suits the season you’re designing for, but are also super clear on what type of pattern it is.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this week’s blog post, and it will help you if you get stuck on what colours you need to include in your Christmas patterns and projects! With the exception of a few patterns like those including snowflakes, winter or a snowman pattern, include the colour red and you can’t go far wrong :)
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Hi there! I’m Nicola, a passionate and colour loving surface pattern designer creating digital pattern designs for products and I want to help you do the same.