A good army colour scheme is not a list of paints. It is a set of decisions about which colour dominates, which colour supports it, where the eye should land, and how much contrast holds it all together. Get those right and a simply painted army looks striking across a table. Get them wrong and even careful painting reads as muddy.
This guide is about designing an original scheme rather than reproducing an existing one. Everything here is design principle, not requirement. Plenty of excellent armies break every guideline below deliberately.
The 60/30/10 starting principle
Borrowed from interior and graphic design, this is a useful starting ratio rather than a rule:
- 60% dominant colour. The colour someone names when they describe your army from across the room. Usually armour, robes or hull.
- 30% secondary colour. Supports the dominant colour and covers substantial secondary areas: cloth, weapon casings, shoulder trim, leatherwork.
- 10% accent. Small, deliberate, high-impact. Lenses, gems, purity seals, cabling, a single piece of trim.
The percentages matter less than the hierarchy. What you are avoiding is three colours all fighting for the same amount of attention, which is the single most common reason an amateur scheme looks busy.
Treat the ratio loosely. A scheme that lands at 70/20/10 or 50/35/15 works fine. What does not work is 33/33/33.
Warm and cool colours
Warm colours (reds, oranges, yellows, warm browns) advance visually and read as aggressive or energetic. Cool colours (blues, greens, purples, cool greys) recede and read as calm, clinical or sinister.
The practical use is contrast between the two. A cool dominant with a warm accent is one of the most reliable combinations in miniature painting, because the warm accent leaps out of a cool field with very little effort. The reverse works equally well.
An entirely warm or entirely cool scheme can be beautiful but needs more care, because you lose that easy separation and have to create interest through value and saturation instead.
Complementary colours
Complementary pairs sit opposite each other on the colour wheel: red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple. Placed next to each other they produce maximum contrast and appear more intense.
The trap is using them in equal amounts, which produces visual noise and can look garish. Complementary pairs work best at unequal ratios. A large field of blue with orange lenses is striking. Half blue and half orange is a traffic cone.
Analogous colours
Analogous colours sit next to each other on the wheel: blue, blue-green and green, for example. They harmonise easily and produce a cohesive, restrained look.
The risk is flatness. An analogous scheme needs strong value separation or a single contrasting accent to stop it reading as one indistinct mass at tabletop distance. A green and teal army with bone-white weapons is analogous plus one break, and that break is what makes it work.
Value is more important than you think
Value means how light or dark a colour is, independent of what colour it is. It is the most underrated variable in miniature painting, and it is the one that determines whether your models read clearly from a metre away.
Here is a test worth doing: photograph a painted test model and convert the image to greyscale. If the whole model collapses into a similar mid-grey, your colours are different in hue but identical in value, and the model will look flat on the table no matter how carefully you blended it.
A good scheme has a deliberate value structure. Something dark, something light, something in between. A mid-blue armour with a mid-brown leather and a mid-green cloak is three colours and one value. A dark blue armour with bone trim and mid-brown leather is three colours and three values, and it will look far better at arm's length.
Saturation
Saturation is how intense or muted a colour is. Straight-from-the-pot colours are often highly saturated, and an army painted entirely in maximum-saturation colours can look artificial.
Mixing a small amount of a neutral or a complementary colour into your dominant knocks the saturation back and makes it read as a material rather than a paint. Keeping one or two elements at full saturation then makes those elements pop. This is one of the easiest ways to make a scheme look considered rather than straight out of the box.
Metallics and neutral colours
Metallics behave differently from ordinary paints because they are strongly directional: they look almost black in shadow and very bright where light catches them. That gives them huge apparent value range, which is why a heavily metallic model can look busy.
Neutrals such as greys, bones, off-whites and browns are the workhorses that let the rest of your scheme breathe. A scheme with a strong dominant colour, a neutral secondary and one saturated accent is a formula that almost always works.
Making weapons and faces read clearly
Two areas deserve special thought because they carry so much of a model's character.
Weapons need to separate from the body. If armour and weapon casing are the same colour and value, the silhouette turns to mush. Giving weapons a distinctly darker or lighter treatment than the armour solves this instantly.
Faces and any exposed skin are natural focal points because human eyes are drawn to them. If your scheme has a lot of exposed faces, they will draw attention whether you plan for it or not, so make sure they are not competing with a bright accent right next to them.
Connecting the base to the miniature
The base is roughly a third of what people see, and it is the most common place a scheme falls apart. A cold grey urban base under a warm desert-coloured army looks like two different projects.
The reliable approach is to pick a base palette that either contrasts cleanly with the model's dominant colour or echoes its accent. Repeating your accent colour somewhere on the base, in a tuft or a piece of debris, ties the whole thing together with very little work. Our guide to basing miniatures covers the practical side.
Test before painting fifty models
This is the single most valuable habit in this article. Paint one complete test model before committing. Not a swatch, not an arm, a finished model with base.
Then look at it properly: at arm's length, under different lighting, next to a model from another army, and photographed in greyscale. Schemes that look excellent at 20cm under a hobby lamp can disappear entirely at a metre under ordinary room light.
Digital mock-ups are a cheap first filter. Take a photo of an unpainted or grey-primed model and colour over it in any basic image editor to test combinations before you open a single pot. It will not tell you how the paints behave, but it will kill obviously bad combinations in minutes.
Example palettes
Five original starting points, each with a clear hierarchy and a deliberate value structure:
| Dominant | Secondary | Accent | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dark teal | Bone | Orange | Cool base with a warm complementary punch. Very high readability. |
| Charcoal | Cream | Crimson | Strong value contrast, restrained and graphic. |
| Olive | Sand | Turquoise | Muted and naturalistic with one unexpected cool note. |
| Burgundy | Brass | Pale blue | Warm and ornate; the pale blue keeps it from going flat. |
| Off-white | Dark grey | Fluorescent accent | High key and modern. Demands clean painting but reads brilliantly. |
Use these as structures rather than prescriptions. Swap the specific hues and keep the relationships.
Common colour scheme mistakes
- Too many colours at equal strength. Without a dominant colour there is no scheme, just a collection of painted parts.
- Insufficient contrast. Usually a value problem rather than a hue problem. Check in greyscale.
- Every detail treated as an accent. If everything is highlighted in bright yellow, nothing stands out. Accents only work because they are rare.
- The base competing with the model. A heavily detailed, brightly coloured base pulls attention away from the miniature standing on it.
- Judging from a single model held close. Armies are seen as groups at distance. A scheme that relies on fine detail work will not survive that viewing condition.
- Choosing colours you dislike painting. Yellow and white are notoriously demanding over large areas. If a scheme means fighting the paint on every model, you will not finish the army. Our guide to batch painting an army is worth reading before you commit.
Frequently asked questions
How many colours should an army scheme use?
Three is a sound target for the main structure, plus neutrals and metallics as needed. Fewer can look austere in a good way. More than four or five competing colours usually becomes hard to control across a whole force.
Do I have to use an established faction scheme?
No. Inventing your own is common and, for many hobbyists, one of the more enjoyable parts of the hobby. If you plan to attend organised events, it is worth checking whether the organiser has any expectations about army presentation, but colour choice itself is normally yours.
What if I have already painted ten models and hate the scheme?
You have three options: repaint them, adjust the scheme going forward and accept a slight inconsistency, or change only the accent colour across the whole force. Changing the accent is by far the cheapest fix and can transform how a scheme reads.
Should I pick the base scheme before or after the model scheme?
Sketch both together, then paint the model first and finalise the base once you can see it. The base exists to support the model, so it is easier to react to a finished miniature than to guess.
How do I make a beginner-friendly scheme?
Choose a mid-tone dominant colour that covers well, avoid large areas of yellow, white or red, and keep the accent count low. If you are painting your first model, our beginner painting guide walks through the process from priming to varnish.
Independent guide published by Blubbercove Ltd/WarSplay. This article is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, authorised by or licensed by Games Workshop Limited. Warhammer 40,000 is a trade mark of Games Workshop Limited.