advice on color matching

[timber_wolf899]

Ok all, since i stink with colors, i'd like a little advice on the following.

1. What is your opinion on a black castle with white highlights<ramparts etc> an dpossibly red roofs?

2. Do you have suggestios on good accent/secondary colors for a castle in mostly dk bluish grey/grey?

3. any other useful color combos to suggest?
thanks!

[lord_of_orks]

1.black with red roofs sounds good to me, but I think the white would stand out to much, maybe dark or light gray/blay.
2.I think light gray or dark tan would look good.
3. light gray+dark gray= dark red+brown= light gray+white= purple+light green=

[Bruce N H]

Heya,

One thing you might do is look at official sets. For instance, mostly black with gray details and red roofs was the color scheme of the Black Knights' Castle:


Blue looks great with a largely light gray or bluish gray castle, as in the Royal King's Castle:


But red accents also look really nice with the light gray, as in the recent King's Castle:


Tan, gray and sand green is the color scheme of the Hogwarts sets, and that works pretty well:


I'm a big fan of sand red, and think it works great with both gray and tan, but sand red is harder to get these days:


One comparison that you can make, which fits what you see in the official sets I linked above, is to look at sports uniforms. They will often have two relatively complementary colors, but then with a splash of a brightly contrasting color. E.g. my high school's colors were blue and white, but then there was also green as an accent. That's kind of a similar idea to the black and gray with red accents, or some of the other examples above. I do agree with Lord of Orks that black, white, and red is probably too much contrast.

Bruce

[Dr.Cogg]

Black and Dark Grey, Black and Bley,Bley and light Grey .

[TooMuchCaffeine]

I'd be careful with a mostly black build - taking photos of it will be a pig if you've got any detail in the black that you want to show up in images.

As for dark grey, I'd suggest tan as a highlight colour. I don't think we see enough of this nice combination.

[AK_Brickster]

I'd be careful with a mostly black build - taking photos of it will be a pig if you've got any detail in the black that you want to show up in images.

Yep! I can attest to that as well. When I first started buying Legos as an AFOL, I bought black because it was cheap and readily available. My first castle was like a big black blob.
A way to get around that would be to incorporate light/dark gray as accents around windows and for arches/doorways to make them "pop". Since my first attempt though, I've shied away from black and am now building mainly in light gray/bley.

Happy building!

[Thoriun]

Personaly i perfer Grey wall, black roof (specialy since i can make a long roof with the colective minifig stands, and it look very good).

I also like Grey with blue roof, an black with blue roof (i'm not a fan of Red, lol) altough black or grey walls with red roof also look good.

Thoriun

[Velliscig]

Sadly I haven't yet looked much into non-black roofing, but I would say Light and Dark gray (of both the older and newer shades) are great together, and browns of either shades together too. Like mentioned above, the tan would also be a nice addition... Really, above all I would say put some "wood" color in there to take away from the solid, lifeless stone look that an all-gray castle would have (like my WIP fortress... I'll have to change it... looks like a giant gray square ).

[OverLoad]

Normally, I use light bley for my creations, whether it be a house or a castle, and tan for the roof, if there is one. And I also add little patches of regular bley to give it a mottled effect.

IMO, it works pretty well for me, but others may think otherwise.