SED 14: Silver or Gold? Hot or Cold?

[kerravonsen]

One of the first things to consider when choosing a colour scheme for jewellery is "Silver or Gold?" One reason is that the most common colours for findings are silver and gold. The more important reason is that jewellery, unlike paintings, is made for wearing, and it is usually worn close to the skin; the skin is the backdrop of the jewellery. Some people have warm skin tones, and some people have cool skin tones(*). If the jewellery doesn't match the skin tone, the person can end up looking washed-out and ill. Warm skin tones need warm colours (gold), and cool skin tones need cool colours (silver).

The colour wheel can be divided into cool colours and warm colours. The warm colours are fire colours and autumn colours: the reds, oranges, yellows, golds, browns. The cool colours centre around blue: blues, greens, purples. Green and purple, however, are on the edge; the yellow in green can make it warm, and the red in purple can make it warm. Purple can be a bit paradoxical; it can look cool against warm colours and warm against cool colours. Green can look good with either warm or cool colours. Pastels also tend to be cool, because they have a lot of white in them, and white is cool. Silver, white, grey and black are all cool.

Just because you want your jewellery to be warm or cool doesn't mean you're limited to use only certain colours. One can often "warm up" or "cool down" a colour scheme by adding lots of gold to warm it up, or lots of silver to cool it down.

Some examples:

* green + gold: warm
* green + silver: cool (but if you want to use a yellowy green, try to make it a pale one)
* red + gold: warm
* red + silver: cool (but make sure it is a ruby-red, not a tomato red, because the latter is too orange-ish)
* purple + gold: warm (but make sure it is a dark purple, not a lavender)
* purple + silver: cool
* brown + cream: warm

Some colours I would just avoid using with their opposite temperature, to be safe, though I've already mentioned that my colour schemes tend not to be adventurous.

I don't use with cool:
* brown (I make an exception for tiger-eye, because it is lovely)
* orange

I don't use with warm:
* pastels (with the exception of cream)

Some things can depend on the proportions of one to another. Brown and turquoise, for example, is a popular colour scheme for evoking a "tribal" look, by mixing wood and semi-precious turquoise. If there is a lot of turquoise and silver, the scheme will tend to be cool; if there is a lot of brown, it will be warmer.

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(*) Some people think hair colour correlates with skin tone, but for the most common hair colours, it doesn't. Someone with brown hair can have warm or cool skin tones; likewise someone with blond hair could be a cool blond or a warm blond. I don't have sufficient data about redheads.


P.S. One thing I don't understand, I have no theory for, is why "jewel-toned" colours work with cool skin tones. I mean, things like sapphire-blue and emerald-green are understandable, but why does ruby-red work? Tomato-red is awful, but things that are crimson and scarlet - those dark, deep reds - they work well. Why?

Comments

[cheyinka]

If I had to guess it's because tomato-red is too yellow, and accents the fact that the skin doesn't have warm tones to it by being so warm itself, but dark, deep red is closer to black (a cool color) and everybody's skin has at least a little red to it (unless they are Marvin the Martian) so it works out okay.

But that's my guess.

It might be the same way that something ruby-colored looks good against silver or something silvery or against gold or something golden, but other reds would be either better with silver (something so red it really is almost black?) or gold (anything more orangey)?

[kerravonsen]

The blackness of the red? Hmmmm.

'cool' red

[fred_mouse]

I'm guessing that those are the tones sold as 'cool red' in paints - I have cool and warm versions of red, yellow, and blue, at a minimum. I'd have to go and look at them and try and match them with a colour chart to see where they sit, and what the undertones are.