Sometimes calm and serene, other times cold and conservative, blue is a versatile color. Pick up pro tips on how to design and decorate using the color blue in this complete guide.
Blue is a universally popular color, with recent surveys in the US and Europe pointing to blue as the favorite color of over half of individuals*. This, along with its adaptable nature and beauty, makes blue a wise choice for a range of design projects.
Read on to discover the meaning, theory, and history of the color blue, as well as how to use blue to create designs that are serene and harmonious.
Skip to the end of the article to discover three cutting-edge blue color palettes to use in your designs. You can also discover a whole spectrum of incredible colors to use in your designs with our new color tool.
But first! How color savvy are you? Take this quiz and find out:
How Is Blue Made?
Blue is one of the three primary colors used in painting, the other two being red and yellow. It is also one of the primary colors used in the light-based RGB color model, alongside red and green. Blue sits between violet and green on the spectrum of visible light.
On a traditional painter’s wheel, blue sits next to green and violet.
On some traditional color wheels, such as this wheel taken from the 1908 book The Colorist, blue sits next to blue violet and bluish cyan, with cyan (which is used as blue in the print-friendly CMYK color model) further along as bluish cyan’s neighbor.
Blue is a cool color, alongside green and violet, as opposed to a warm color (such as orange, red, and yellow).
Hues of Blue
Most blues contain a small mixture of other colors—azure contains some green, while ultramarine contains violet. This creates a wide range of blue hues, each of which have their own distinct character and mood.
Blues also come in a range of tints, which are mixed with white to create paler blues, and shades, which are mixed with black to create darker blues. Ranging from feather-light blue ice and sky blue to inky Kentucky blue and navy, there’s a tint or shade of blue to suit any project.
Discover a wide range of blue hues, including:
- Cyan-blues, such as azure, electric blue, lapis lazuli and, of course, cyan blue are energizing and vibrant, which set them apart from other more tranquil blues.
- Violet blues, such as periwinkle, cornflower, and opal blue are traditional, feminine, and exceptionally pretty.
- Green blues, such as coral blue, eggshell, aqua, and turquoise are reminiscent of water, rivers, and oceans. They can feel more dynamic and lively than other blue shades.
Gray blues, such as faded denim, chambray blue, and serenity (the latter of which was Pantone’s Color of the Year in 2016), tend to be cool, sedate, and peaceful. They’re also some of the most versatile blue hues.
Pure blues, such as cobalt (named after the mineral), embodies the main characteristics of blue. They are sincere, calming, and soothing, but can also be overwhelming if used too liberally.
Discover how you can use a variety of blue hues using the Shutterstock color tool. This tool explores palettes and images related to a range of serene and beautiful blues, including sky blue, Kentucky blue, aqua, and periwinkle.
Blue’s Complementary Color
Blue’s complementary color (which sits directly opposite it on a color wheel) is orange.
The Meaning of Blue
From early in human experience, blue was the color of open spaces such as oceans and skies. As a result, the color can on the one hand be calming, serene, spiritual. Blue is also associated with freedom and imagination. In some cases, blue can even feel overwhelming and expansive.
The latter qualities of blue, alongside its low-energy properties, has led it to be sometimes associated with sadness, depression, and melancholy. To “feel blue” is to be down or depressed, while singing the blues is to sing melancholy music.
Despite these associations, blue is largely perceived as a positive color, and is celebrated for its calming and relaxing qualities. Believed to relax the mind in a crisis (many hospital and servicemen uniforms are blue), it is also believed to be an excellent color in aiding communication and diplomacy.
Color meanings also change across cultures. Other qualities and meanings of blue include:
- Blue can signify intelligence, reliability, conservatism, and stability, which explains why in some settings, blue is a corporate color, worn universally by politicians, businessmen and women, and public servants, including police and firefighters.
- In many cultures blue is a highly spiritual color, with meanings varying across countries and religions. In Turkey and Iran, for example, blue is symbolic of mourning and grief. Similarly, in China blue is often associated with ghosts and death. In Western culture, the “something blue,” or a blue garter worn by a bride, is symbolic of love, purity, and fidelity.
- Someone with “blue blood” is considered to have aristocratic ancestry. This originates from the Spanish phrase sangre azul, which was applied to some of the oldest Castilian families, who claimed never to have intermarried with individuals from other ethnicities.
- In English-speaking countries, blue can be associated with the risqué. A “blue movie” is a euphemism for a pornographic film, and to “turn the air blue” means to swear profusely.
The Origins of Blue
Blue pigments were not discovered or used for a long time in early human history. Brown, black, and red pigments were predominant instead. Some of the earliest blue dyes were sourced from plants such as woad and indigo.
In Mesopotamia and Egypt, blue pigments for jewelry were achieved using minerals and semi-precious stones, including lapis lazuli and azurite.
What’s considered to be the world’s first synthetic pigment, Egyptian blue, dates back to 2500 BC, when the ancient Egyptians ground together silica, lime, copper, and alkalai, and heated it to extremely high temperatures.
Used for a wide range of everyday purposes, blue was also believed to protect the dead against evil in the afterlife. Mummies were also wrapped in cloths that were dyed with blue pigment.
Vivid dark blue was favored by artists during the Byzantine period, who used the color to represent the sky on beautiful ceiling mosaics in churches.
Although in the Middle Ages in Europe, blue was largely considered a color of the poor (with the nobility favoring red or purple), this attitude changed drastically when the Saint Denis Basilica in Paris was rebuilt with cobalt-stained glass windows in the early 12th century. Now filled with a serene and beautiful blue light, the church became famous throughout the Christian world. Other blue stained glass windows were soon built in imitation, such as those at Chartres Cathedral and Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.
The spiritual quality of blue was enhanced during the Renaissance, when artists used ultramarine pigments in paint to identify the Virgin Mary and attract the viewer’s eye towards her.
In the 17th century, the Duke of Prussia, Frederick William, decided to give his army blue uniforms. Thanks partly to the wide availability of indigo dye, this sparked a trend for blue army uniforms that continued into the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Members of the New York City Police Department adopted navy blue uniforms in 1853, modeled after the London Metropolitan Police, who were also dressed in dark blue. Navy blue is still one of the most popular choices for military, police, firefighter, and school uniforms today.
In the late 19th century, the concept of the blue uniform was reinvented by a German immigrant called Levi Strauss. He created a pair of heavy cotton work trousers dyed with indigo, naming them blue jeans. By the 1950s, blue jeans had become the staple uniform of young people in the United States, Europe, and in many other parts of the world.
Since Vogue gave blue jeans the seal of approval in 1935, humble denim been given the high-fashion treatment, with houses like Chanel reinventing blue jeans for the luxury market.
Today, blue has a huge variety of associations across popular culture and society. Perhaps an overarching theme is blue’s versatility as a color used by societies, corporations, and organizations.
From the sports teams who adopt blue for their kit color to universities who patent their own unique blue hue (such as Oxford Blue), blue has been universally adopted for its suitability as a color of collective identity.
How to Design with Blue
Blue is an incredibly versatile and adaptable color for graphics, interiors, illustration, or web design. As a universally popular color, it’s also a failsafe choice for design that is likely to be well-received by a range of audiences.
Blue can be used as an accent color, or take centerstage in either a blue-on-blue scheme or when teamed with neutral colors, such as black, brown, white or gray.
Bright, vivid blues like cobalt work particularly well when teamed with neutrals, helping to brighten otherwise dull schemes.
In this brand identity and packaging design for Ukrainian coffee brand Co. Means Coffee, design collective Canape Agency allowed blue to be the color of focus in an otherwise neutral scheme.
Blue can also be treated as a neutral color when paired with more vivid, energetic colors, such as acid yellow, red, or coral.
Here, German illustrator Sandro Rybak fuses blue with red, yellow, and pink to create a vintage-inspired palette for her abstract illustrations.
In another example, Brazilian designer Gabriel M. Ramos used a pure and powerful blue as a cooling antidote to powdery acid yellow, creating a scheme that is perfectly suited for his industrial consultancy client, Cogni.
In interior design, the character of a room can be drastically altered depending on the hue of blue, and its dominance in the space.
Mixed with generous doses of white, pale or pure blues are fresh and airy, reminiscent of cloudy skies and ocean waves. A white and blue palette has nautical heritage, which gives interiors using this scheme a breezy coastal style.
Dark blues are more formal and serious, and make an excellent backdrop to warm woods and masculine grays.
What Colors Go with Blue?
Colors that go with blue depend on the type of color scheme you want to use:
- A monochromatic blue color scheme uses paler tints and darker shades of blue to create an entirely blue palette.
- A complementary blue color scheme incorporates orange. Orange’s neighbor colors, red and yellow, are complementary to green and purple, respectively.
- An analogous blue color scheme uses the colors bordering blue on either side of the color wheel. Blue’s neighboring colors are green and violet.
- A triadic blue color scheme includes yellow and red since they are equidistant from blue on a modern color wheel.
To find the colors and exact hex codes that go with blue, use our color combinations tool. It shows you monochromatic, analogous, triadic, and contrasting color palettes for a variety of blue hues. Try a scheme with sky blue, Kentucky blue, aqua, and periwinkle.
Below, discover three cutting-edge, pre-made color palettes for the color blue.
Palette 1: Vivacious Blue
Blue has a reputation for calmness and serenity, but with the right teammates, it can be fresh and energizing. This vivid palette takes its inspiration from Rajasthan, the “Blue City,” in India, which is famed for its cobalt-colored streets.
Palette 2: Summer Blue
This palette combines a cool cobalt blue with warming gold and terracotta for a summery scheme with a Mediterranean feel. Balanced and mature, this palette would work beautifully for interior schemes.
Palette 3: Blue and Blush
Pairing petrol blue with cornflower and teaming these with a soft coral and blush pink makes for a sophisticated palette that balances cool and warm, masculine and feminine. A stylish scheme for interior or brand design.
Eager to discover more incredible colors to use in your designs? Discover a whole spectrum of incredible colors with our new color tool that helps to bring your projects to life.
License this cover image via contributor Matt Ragen.
