5 Gothic Colors to Use (Instead of Red)

When you think "Gothic", traditional colors like black, deep blood red, and dark purple may come to mind.

But Gothic doesn't have a set color palette.

When everyone pulls from the same handful of references, it all starts feeling a little derivative. Brands use the same symbols, colors, and words...and it becomes one haunting castle in a sea of haunting castles.

Whether you're crafting your brand, your home, or your wardrobe...

Here are 5 alternate colors that still feel dark aesthetic and gothic.

Orpiment Yellow

Orpiment is a highly toxic arsenic mineral. It was frequently used to paint dragons, demons, and the edges of sacred book pages, but with every turn of the page, it would send small fragments of orpiment into the air for the reader to breathe. It was also used as hair removal, leaving behind weeping, ulcerated chemical burns.

Haunting Blue

Desaturated, cold blue-gray feels like lifelessness. Like the cool-tone veins under the pale skin of a corpse. White Victorian nightgowns in moonlight, fog at dusk, and mist in a cemetery. It feels spectral...haunting.

Webcap Violet

This murky purple tone is reminiscent of the strange and enchanting violet webcap mushroom. In its early stages, it has a distinctive cobweb-like partial veil from the edge of the cap to the stem. It contains around 100 times more iron than most other fungi, and if you cut the flesh and apply a drop of potassium hydroxide, it undergoes a dramatic chemical reaction which turns the skin blood-red. Very Gothic...

Grave Moss Green

Blackened olive. Ivy consuming an old cottage. Wet forest floors. Algae on stagnant water. It feels like decay feeding new growth. It’s the color of the toxic Yew tree - often thought to symbolize the bridge between life, death, and immortality. If you want to feel ancient, overgrown and a little feral...this is the hue.

Withered Lilac

This color is too bruised to be dusty rose, and too warm and fleshy to be traditional purple. It feels like dawn storm clouds over a gothic castle, faded velvet curtains, dried flowers pressed between the pages of old books, and lipstick dried and cracking it its tube. It’s romantic. Like something beautiful that has been left to time.

If you’re craving a brand with a unique & moody color palette, I'm the brand designer for you!

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