Colour Theory

Lego has released parts in many many colours, and continues to release more.

This opens up lots of opportunities to play with different colour palettes.

Colour theory can be used to create good looking colour palettes for your mocs.

Three colours is a good minimum for a build. More colours can be added, but too many colours can lead to a moc looking cluttered.

Complementary colours can help us understand which pairs of colours work well together. Complementary colours come from opposite ends of the colour wheel.

In addition to colour, we also need to consider the saturation and lightness of colours. When two colours have different hues but similar saturation and brightness, it’s hard for one colour to “win” over the other, and makes it hard to differentiate them.

We can use variations on a colour to add depth (e.g. dark brown, nougat, light nougat or green, lime green, spring green).

The background colour you choose for your photo will also impact the relative importance of colours: light colours pop more on dark backgrounds and less on light backgrounds.

We can pair solid colours with trans colours.Trans colours distribute light differently and can take on a glowing appearance. More than one trans colour can be distracting.

It is common to have one or two neutral colours such as black or grey. More than two neutral colours can get messy (if they’re different, like black, dark blueish gray and light blueish gray) or can get confusing (if they’re similar, light light grey and pearl grey).