Understanding the concept of color value can help quilters learn to combine fabrics to make quilts with a satisfying sense of visual balance, a “rightness” that everyone can see, even if most people don’t understand the color theory behind it.
A basic knowledge of value will help you become more confident in choosing colors for your quilts, for other sewing projects, and for your home décor.
Color Value Measures a Fabric's Brightness or Darkness
When you work with fabric colors, the word “value” refers to the brightness or darkness of a particular color. The more white a color contains, the higher its value and the more light and airy it looks in a quilt. The more black a color contains, the lower its value and the richer and deeper it looks in a quilt.
Color Mixing with White and Black Creates Tints and Shades
The 24 primary and secondary colors on the color wheel are called pure hues. Every color on the wheel can be lightened by combining it with white, or darkened by combining it with black. The resulting color mixtures are called tints and shades.
- Tints are pure hues lightened with white, and are always paler (higher value) than the pure color.
- Shades are pure hues darkened with black, and are always darker (lower value) than the pure color.
Some of the pure hues – yellow, orange, yellow-green, and green, for instance – are inherently bright. Other pure hues – red-purple, purple, and blue-purple, for instance – are naturally darker and heavier looking. This built-in value affects how the colors look when they are combined with fabrics of other colors. Learn more about basic color theory for sewing and quilting.
Fabric Color Combinations that Work Include Both Lights and Darks
The balance of light and dark in a quilt has a big impact on the way people respond to it. A color scheme that uses too many dark fabrics can give a quilt a heavy look and make any piecing or appliqué designs hard to see. Using too many pale fabrics together can make the quilt seem bland and uninteresting. A quilt that contains mostly fabrics from the middle of the value scale – neither pale nor dark – can look monotonous and out of focus. The trick is to create color schemes that blend both high and low value colors to give the quilt contrasts that make it visually interesting but not overwhelming.
Light-Dark Fabric Combinations Can Excite or Soothe the Eye
Always consider how a quilt will be used before you choose a color palette for your design. High-contrast fabric combinations are exciting to look at, but they can be visually tiring too. A black-and-white color scheme could make a bold statement on a living room wall, but be too exciting for a child’s bedroom. To create a calm feeling, use a more limited range of values. For a sense of richness and motion, use a broader range of values.
Use a Design Wall to Test Fabric Color Schemes
The best way to decide whether a particular set of fabric colors work together is to put them together and just leave them there for a few days to let them grow on you (or not!) It’s surprising how much the perceived value of a color can change when it is viewed together with other colors.
If you have a quilt design wall, put swatches of the fabrics you are considering up on the wall together for a day or two. For complex quilts that include lots of small pieces, it may be a good idea to make a test block so you can see the fabrics together in the precise combination that will appear in the finished quilt. Put the block on the design wall or on a flat, neutral-colored surface for viewing. Your initial reaction may change as your mind has a chance to absorb the colors together.
Testing various light-dark combinations will give you a sense of what level of color contrast feels comfortable in your quilts.
The quilts shown at the bottom of the page were all displayed at the 2009 Quilting in the Garden show at Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore, California. From left to right, they are:
- Tumbling Stars, #70, by Laura Nownes and Diana McClun
- Jelly Girl, #152, by Joanna Figueroa
- Nate & Sarah's Quilt, #25, by Ida Escola
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Christine Mann - Christine Mann writes about quilting, home decor sewing, and creativity in daily life.
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