How Do I Choose the Right Colors for My Children’s Book?
Instead of thinking that you have to find the ‘right’ colors, let’s think of it instead as finding powerful colors that communicate the story to the viewer. There are many color combinations that can do this, not just one ‘right’ one!
Not only can we use some deduction and a bit of research to choose colors, but don’t underestimate your own preferences!
Let’s look at two different ways to choose powerful colors and what they will communicate to your viewers: Emotion/mood and theme/subject.
How Can I Use Colors to Express Emotion or Mood?
Emotion or mood can relate to the entire book or a large portion of the story. Generally, it will be consistent for a significant number of pages.
I believe that using color to express emotion is more important that other practical matters like setting or season.
Question : Is there an emotion or mood that permeates your entire book or large portions of the story?
What colors can express the emotions or mood in your book’s illustrations?
Is it a humorous and lighthearted story requiring bright, colorful choices? Does your book have a soft, calm vibe that could be emphasized with pastels or muted tones? Maybe there is a lot of anger being expressed—what colors could really get that feeling across?
Basing some of the main colors in your book on the mood or emotions of the story is a powerful way to share them with the reader. This will tie the illustrations to the words more effectively.
A Case Study : Maybe A Whale
In ‘Maybe A Whale’ (written by Kirsten Pendreigh and illustrated by me) the children’s book story:
begins after a funeral (somber tone)
continues into dealing with grief and loss (discovery and tentative joy)
and ends with the promise of tomorrow (hope)
These are three very different emotions! But I didn’t want to completely change the color palette throughout the book because the pictures wouldn’t look like they belong together anymore.
The main colors I used for illustrations in ‘Maybe A Whale' were blue (because it takes place on and near the ocean), purple (for nighttime and somber scenes), and yellow (to contrast with the other colors and add hopeful, happy emotions).
Instead of changing those colors completely, based on the emotion in each scene, I can just alter them slightly depending on the mood.
Above: the beginning of the book uses muted tones without a lot of saturation to reflect somber emotions.
Above: as the characters head out on their ocean voyage they begin to heal together and learn about dealing with loss together. The colors become much more saturated and bold, expressing the change in mood. (However, the main color hues remain the same; purple, turquoise, yellow)
Below: At the end, more pastel and lighter tones are used to emphasis hope and a new day.
Three ways to vary emotion without changing hues
Saturation and value: Although the general color palette stayed the same throughout all the examples above (turquoise, purple, yellow), you can definitely see the emotional range changing based on saturation and value.
Warm or cool? Another way to vary the emotion without changing the colors could be to switch some or all of them from a warm tone to a cool one.
Quantities: Or you could shake it up by using different amounts of each color: more red in images that feel angry, less in the calm images.
How else can we show emotion without completely changing the colors in the book? Give us some ideas in the comments!
How Can I Express the Theme of My Kid’s Book with Color?
What is theme? There are a number of different answers, depending on who you ask, however I am going to use the definition below:
Theme : the main subject of a piece of writing or an idea that recurs in a work of literature.
Theme can overlap with emotion or mood (eg. anger, love) but can also stand alone (learning, family, the desert).
Often there is more than one theme; for example, in ‘Maybe A Whale’, the theme was about dealing with grief and what happens after death—but it also included family, ocean, and adventure.
You can choose one or two themes to work with in your color explorations, but keep it simple so you don’t get overwhelmed and the reader doesn’t get confused!
Question - What is the theme of your children’s book?
A children’s book with a theme of learning or school could use primary colors as the base for color choices, as often used in schools and educational spaces.
Another book, with a theme of imagination or fantasy, could go wild with magical color palettes.
Maybe your kid’s book is about outer space—the natural choice would be to go with cool tones and dark backgrounds.
Sometimes it may seem obvious—a book about the desert would probably have a lot of brown or red hues. But that doesn’t mean you can’t pair those colors with something else to show emotion or another theme!
Maybe it’s a desert book with a very sad tortoise. Mixing in cool blues or purples to express sadness could create a very unique palette that conveys both theme and emotion.
Above: in ‘Maybe A Whale’, the themes of adventure and ocean led me to use a lot of blues, turquoises, and bright tones as the main colors of the book. I couldn’t really escape using blue in this book, but I could choose which specific types of blue I used.
Other Considerations
When choosing colors, I consulted a color wheel (and used a color palette tool like the ones I mention in this article here: Three Tools to Help You Choose Colors for Your Children’s Book).
I knew I was going to use a turquoise blue (since it was an ocean themed book), and I needed to make sure that my other choices would create harmony.
Purple seemed like a natural choice to convey both sadness and the nighttime sky scenes, and would look great with blue since they are analogous colors on the color wheel (next to each other on the color wheel).
The complimentary colors (opposite on the color wheel) for blue and purple are orange and yellow. Perfect! Those fit in perfectly with the camping scenes and would help to convey happier tones later on in the book.
Check out Paletton for an easy color wheel you can consult as well as palette building tools.
There are many ways to choose which colors you want to use as the main palette for your children’s book, theme and emotion are just two of them! Check out my other article: Choosing Color Based on Setting & Characters
What other ways do you use to choose colors for your children’s book illustrations? Let me know in the comments!
Learn more about me as an illustrator or check out the kid’s books I’ve illustrated over on my website here.
Say hello over on BlueSky where I hang out quite a bit!