Color Dominance
Dominant colors are the first colors we notice when we look at a quilt. Color dominance is complex, because it depends on the overall combination of your fabric selections, but there are a few easy ways to predict how your quilting fabrics will interact with each other.Pure Colors
- Pure colors are more dominant in a design than toned colors containing gray.
- Yellow is the most dominant pure color.
Warm Colors Advance
Warm colors, on the right of the color wheel, are more dominant than the cool colors on the left side of the color wheel.
Dark and Light Colors
Darker patches are usually more noticeable than light patches, so they can be used to create contrast in a quilt -- remember that color warmth can step in and make the darks recede.
Extremely light fabrics used as random, infrequent accents often move forward in the design, making them more noticeable than the darks. Traditional Amish quilters used that technique to add sparkle to their quilts.
Read more about the interaction of dark and light colors in Color Value for Quilters. Value is just as important (sometimes more important than color itself.
Neutral Colors
Neutrals are very weak colors that allow other colors to move forward in a design. Quilters often use neutrals for backgrounds or in other areas of the quilt they want to be less noticeable.
Variations of white, gray and beige are considered neutral, and so is black when it acts as a backdrop for vibrant colors.
