Colour has a temperature before it has a name
Warm and cool decide the mood long before the hue does.
6 min readColour
Temperature before hue
Before you argue about which red, decide whether the piece is warm or cool. Temperature sets the mood at a distance no one is close enough to name the colour.
Neutrals carry temperature too
A warm grey and a cool grey beside the same red produce two entirely different pieces. Most palettes fail in the neutrals, not the accents — the accent gets an hour of attention and the greys get none.
Keep one family honest
Pick a temperature and let one or two elements disagree with it deliberately. Everything disagreeing is not a palette; it is a collection.
Most palettes fail in the greys, not in the accent.
—Try this
Take an existing layout and shift only the neutrals two degrees warmer. Change nothing else. Note how much the accent appears to change.