Colors That Go With Emerald Green: Complementary Colors
Written by MasterClass
Last updated: Aug 12, 2022 • 2 min read
This green color, named after the emerald gem, may evoke singular touchstones such as Saint Patrick’s Day or the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, but it’s a versatile, bold color you can work into your home décor and paint colors.
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A Brief History of Emerald Green
The emerald green color is a shade of green named after the emerald gemstone. Light and bright, this jewel tone makes a lush addition to any color palette. This green shade can work well in style and interior design color schemes, giving a pop to living rooms and bathrooms. Unlike forest green or olive green, emerald has a vibrant quality with blue undertones, bringing it closer to a teal. Victorians used emerald dyes to color green dresses. Today, emerald is a popular hue for elegant evening wear and home décor, giving designs a glam quality.
Emerald Green Décor
Greens come in many shades—lime green, mint green, dark green—and emerald is one of the color’s more striking and bright hues. This means the color can be the star of the show or act as a lovely accent. Here are a few ideas of how to use emerald green—rich in saturation—in various settings:
- Dining room wallpaper: If your dining room is more formal, try employing some different colors in your wallpaper to offset the space’s natural wood or neutral colors. Lighter shades of emerald can lean toward pastel, so working some fun color pairings—green and pink, green and blue—into your striped or patterned wallpaper can breathe life into the room.
- Kitchen backsplash: Kitchens can be bold, and a sweeping emerald tile backsplash can genuinely dazzle. Make this fun backsplash a part of unique color combos—fuchsia cabinets, primrose chairs—to create a dynamic eating space that’s sure to impress.
- Seaside home accent: This blue-green color would be right at home in a coastal cottage. If you lean into creams and off-white colors in your home, then emerald greens can work nicely as a pop in bathroom wallpaper or when seen in a collection of sea glass filled with ocean blues and seafoam greens.
Colors That Go With Emerald Green
Emerald green has several complementary colors. As a brighter color, it will pop against dark colors or feel in harmony with a collection of lighter ones. Emerald is a secondary color—the primary colors of blue and yellow mix to make emerald—and it pairs with its color components. For example, dark blue or light canary yellow are colors that pair well with emerald. Pink is opposite green on the color wheel, so a bubble-gum pink or magenta can make for a fun color combination.
Emerald accents can add a pop of color to an outfit or an interior space. In the same way a fiddle-leaf fig can brighten a contemporary, monochromatic home, emerald green in trinkets, wallpaper design, and décor pieces such as blankets and rugs can enliven dark grays and off-whites in your home.
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