Category: Color Palettes

See the standing figure in crimson? She feels like a held note to me; still and focused. While the seated figure reads the sheet music as if her thoughts are blending with each note. Behind them, the landscape recedes into that dreamy, Italianate distance Burne-Jones loved: not quite a real place, more like a mind’s “elsewhere,” where art and feeling get to linger.

This painting lives at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (oil on canvas), and it has that distinct Burne-Jones hush: beauty that isn’t trying to dazzle, just to enchant, slowly, the way a melody does when you finally stop hurrying.

I’ve created a color palette based on Music, feel free to use it if it resonates with you.

HEX codes didn’t exist in the Pre-Raphaelites’ era, of course, but translating their hues into a digital palette is a strangely satisfying way to carry their colors into the modern world.

This palette feels like music wrapped in velvet. It’s rich, hushed, and quietly dramatic.

The garnet red(7F1224) is the painting’s heartbeat (that sweeping dress), grounded by warm, woody brown (784430) like the violin’s body and carved stone details. Around them, Burne-Jones cools everything down with misty greys (888E8B, B6BCBB) in the sky, marble, and distant light, then deepens the mood with mossy olive (4A4A3C) and midnight indigo (252A40), the shadow notes that make the whole scene feel intimate, contemplative, and Renaissance dreamlike.

As an example of how to use HEX codes, I used HTML to make the background of this text that delicious crimson we see in 7F1224, while the text uses the misty grey B6BCBB code.

Here’s a color palette inspired by Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Veronica Veronese. It’s a stunning work filled with rich greens, warm golds, and deep earthy tones. Feel free to use this palette for your own designs. It’s perfect for digital graphics, mood boards, or anything that could use a touch of Pre-Raphaelite color.

Veronica Veronese described by Rossetti:

Suddenly leaning forward, the Lady Veronica rapidly wrote the first notes on the virgin page. Then she took the bow of the violin to make her dream reality; but before commencing to play the instrument hanging from her hand, she remained quiet a few moments, listening to the inspiring bird, while her left hand strayed over the strings searching for the supreme melody, still elusive. It was the marriage of the voices of nature and the soul — the dawn of a mystic creation.

The description above is using these colors from the palette: Background: EEDBA5, Quotation marks: 793705, Left Border: 1F2604 Text: 1F2604

Alexa Wilding is the model in Veronica Veronese, and she appears throughout many of Rossetti’s later paintings. For a wonderfully engaging look at her life as a Pre-Raphaelite muse, Kirsty Stonell Walker’s novel A Curl of Copper and Pearl offers a vivid and entertaining reimagining of Alexa’s world.

One of the quiet joys of loving art is realizing that the colors that move you on a canvas can just as easily shape your home, wardrobe, creative projects, or even the mood of a season in your life. Art is full of palettes and harmonies chosen with intention, emotion, symbolism, and we can use those as a catalyst for our own creativity.

Here’s how to lift color directly from the paintings you love and weave it into your everyday world.

Start With a Painting You Love

You know the one. The image you keep returning to. The one you’ve saved, bookmarked, printed, or dreamed about. That painting is your color anchor.

Ask yourself:

• What emotion does this painting create?
• What part of the painting do you love most? Is it the background? The clothing? Perhaps the foliage?
• Are you drawn to the bright tones or the shadows? Or both?

You’re looking for the feeling the painting gives you. The palette will come from that.

Look for the “Three Key Colors”

You can definitely expand your palette to more (as I have done in a couple of palettes in this post) but to start, recognize that every painting basically has three dominant color stories:

• A base color (the tone that fills most of the canvas, often a background or environmental color)
• An accent color (the hue that often catches your eye first)
• A shadow or grounding color (the deeper tone that gives the painting weight)

For Millais’ Ophelia, for example:

• Base: earthy greens
• Accent: water-blues and her embroidered dress
• Shadow: soft browns and dark riverbank tones

Once you know these three, you can build a usable palette instantly.

Use Digital Tools to Pull Exact Color Values

If you want the precise hex codes (perfect for design, branding, or digital art), try:

• Canva’s color picker
• Adobe Color
• Coolors.co
• Eyedropper.org

Upload the artwork and click on sections you love. Suddenly you have hex codes, CMYK values, RGB builds, the whole palette distilled from a brushstroke.

You can even create a swatch card labeled “Ophelia Greens” or “Rossetti Reds.”

Pay Attention to Neutrals

We often fixate on the brightest colors, but the neutrals are what make a palette powerful. Think:

• the ivory of skin tones
• the soft shadows under fabric folds
• the misty haze behind a figure
• the warm umber undertones in old oil paintings

These subtle hues keep the palette grounded and wearable, literally and aesthetically.

Here’s a palette I created using Circe Indvidiosa by John William Waterhouse. This is a stunning image filled with hypnotic greens and using a color picker tool, you can isolate specific hues and generate a HEX code for each one. You can then use the HEX codes when creating your own graphic designs.

Decide How You Want to Use the Palette

Once you’ve extracted your colors, translate them into real world uses:

For your home:

Use the base color on walls or linens, the accent color for pillows or artwork, and the shadow color for furniture or frames.

For fashion & personal style:

Your accent becomes a statement piece; your base becomes everyday wear; your shadow becomes the depth in accessories or outer layers.

For creative projects:

Apply the palette to your branding, illustrations, social media graphics, or journaling spreads.

For mood setting:

Let the colors shape your flowers, candles, playlists, even your makeup.

Color As An Act of Mindful Devotion

When you build a palette from artwork you love, you’re entering a conversation with the piece. It’s as if you’re saying:

I see you. I see what you’re made of. Let me carry a part of you into my own world.

Whether you’re designing, studying, journaling, or dreaming, color can be a bridge between past and present, between the Pre-Raphaelites and our modern creative lives..

Make It Your Own

Once you’ve gathered your palette, treat it like a box of magical crayons. Nudge the saturation, gently brighten the tones, let the colors dance a little. You’re not trying to recreate the painting, you’re borrowing its heartbeat and letting it hum through your own world.

Most of all, remember: color is meant to be played with! So go ahead! Experiment, delight, and enjoy every luminous minute of it.