So I am in need of picking my “colors” … Anyone have any good suggestions as to what they like/would want to do? Wanted something different originally but just throw out ideas!
Thanks!
This is something that I’ve thought about a lot, and as an art student I find really fun to help people with. Pick one colour that you really like and think would look good on your horse, and then one or two complimentary neutral colours.
Here are some examples:
My old barn: royal blue and yellow (to loud, imo)
My current barn & the owner’s training business: hunter green, beige and white
My coach & her training business: purple, black and silver (I helped her with this)
Me: black, grey and white, with some navy or dark purple (to appease my coach)
My old colours: chocolate and baby blue
Navy, hunter, reds/burgundy and black are all very popular main colours, but chocolate is a nice one too. I find that grey and white go with basically any colour, but white is best as a 3rd colour, so add some variation. I would pick a dark main colour, so that it can hide dirt (coolers, saddle pads, etc), but it would compliment most horses. If you pick a bright jewel tone (turquoise, red, royal blue, purple) it may be best matched with a black or a grey to neutralize it. That being said, bright, fire-truck red is kind of scary when paired with black, I much prefer my reds to be closer to burgundy. I’m personally a fan of having three, so that if you have a cooler or custom saddle pads or whatever made, you can have a base, pipe and trim.
Some other barns that I know of are red/black, grey/burgundy, royal blue/black and turquoise/black (really striking)
My coach wanted to do purple, turquoise and grey, but I talked her out of it. Too busy and not very professional
What’s your goal? To have everything match, or to be different enough that they are distinctive? And how much money do you want to spend on custom stuff? Unusual colors tend to be quite difficult to match across product lines. My BFF and I both use hunter green and gray as our base colors, but when going custom, I use a purple piping and she uses hot pink. We’ve discovered that the purples and pinks have a huge amount of variation (or are simply not available) depending on who you get it from–unless you want to go whole hog with Personalized Products or the Clothes Horse, which is a little pricey for my blood.
Mine are black with Hunter green and purple. When I got my first horse, at 11, I wanted the colors hunter green and purple, but I chose hunter green and royal blue because the hunter/purple combo was my trainer’s and I didn’t want to copy her. I started riding with her when I was six and she taught me so much. She was like my barn mommy. After she passed away of cancer, I took on her colors, to keep her and her dream alive. Now, whenever I go in the ring, I feel her with me.
I think barn colors are something completely personal and as it was said above you should decide what your goal is first.
That being said I think one of my favorite combos I ever saw pulled off was beige/white/baby blue. I think if I’m remembering correctly that it was Wendy Pola’s farm.
Edited to add: My equitation horse came to me with his blankets and they were green base, maroon border, yellow piping. Sounds awful, but looked so sharp on him (He was a dark, dark bay).
Our barn is Burgundy white and hunter green. I personally love the red/chocolate combos I’ve seen.
I really do not plan on spending a ton of money to do fully custom products… & have thought about about that when putting my colors together. I was thinking
Burgundy, gold, white
Black, tan (or gold), white
Navy, tan (or gold), white <<< this is one of my favorites so far.
I like all of those. They’re classic. I’d look at dover ans smartpak to see their stock color combos
My trainer’s barn colors were hunter green and gray(sort of medium).Very nice looking on all horse colors. I also got some nice anti sweat and bathing sheets on sale( really good sale) and they are hunter and navy. Now that I don’t really show much anymore, I go for weird colors. Hot pink :you can always find your brush, blankets, buckets, etc cause they stand out and no one else wants them. My new horse is starting with blaze orange blankets so I can tell which horse gets what blankets. Again, they stand out, and nobody else wants them…hehe. The BO where I board just got a nice fleece cooler that is burgundy with cream braid and it looks really nice, even on her chestnut. I can’t remember where I saw this, but recently saw a cooler that was chocolate brown with teal and cream.
[QUOTE=raisethebar;7458256]
I really do not plan on spending a ton of money to do fully custom products… & have thought about about that when putting my colors together. I was thinking
Burgundy, gold, white
Black, tan (or gold), white
Navy, tan (or gold), white <<< this is one of my favorites so far.[/QUOTE]
Black, tan, white is very crisp and nice. Dover makes drapes and stuff in those colors. They are pretty affordable and classic looking.
What up with all you guys doing green, black and purple? My accent color is lavender, but otherwise I’m there. And no one had those colors when I chose them about 20 years ago.
OP, I made my decision based on the availability of colors. Back in the day, there were few options. Typically you could get things like buckets or blankets in red, blue and green. After that, you really had to go custom. So at that point even further back than 20 years), I choose black and green. They’d look good on any color horse, be reserved and dark, and be available in the equipment (or paint or electrical tape) I’d need. And all my stuff down to brushes, hoof picks and step ladders had my barn colors on them. I didn’t/don’t lose equipment.
I added the lavender as a piping color. I wanted something light to stand out against my two darker colors. Also, the lavender was a nod to a trainer who had taught me a great deal and was the third color he added to black and brown that his mentor-type trainer used. ’
I usually make green the base color. I have a few things that have black as their base color, but that was an experimental phase. I now am consistent about the green being primary.
For someone picking their colors (and I’d do it all over again if someone would pay for it all), I think these things are true:
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For your base color and middle color at least, try to pick ones you know you can buy in non-custom form. The piping color like my lavender can be a little tough to match all the time. But by the time you get into stuff like piping or grosgrain ribbon edging or embroidered monograms, you are already working with someone who does custom work.
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IMO, three colors is a little fancier than two. If I had a lot of money, I might add some kind of plaid for my wool sheet products but otherwise keep the three colors the same. A while back, I saw barns that used blackwatch plaid and black binding. It looked very nice. That was when rain sheet makers were into that dark plaid.
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Pick colors that look good with most horses but screw it if they don’t. I don’t think my combo would look best on a chestnut. But I haven’t owned one of those in a long time so I don’t care. If I were asking clients to spend the kind of money it costs to outfit show horses in my barn colors, I’d choose differently.
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But be original. IMO, turquoise is under-used as an accent color. I can think of some nice combinations that would incorporate that, and you never see that in English world.
When a friend opened her training barn, she picked her colors by leafing through the catalogs. The most common colors for blankets etc were hunter green & navy. Done. It gave her and her customers a ready option if they didn’t want to go custom.
[QUOTE=carroal;7458346]
Black, tan, white is very crisp and nice. Dover makes drapes and stuff in those colors. They are pretty affordable and classic looking.[/QUOTE]
I believe Dover offers this combo in stock for bridle bags, boot bags, etc. I have a boot bag with this combo that I bought on sale there one day - the availability would help sway my decision!
Go to Dover, Smart Pak, etc web sites and see what the most frequently made color combinations for horse clothing are. If you want things to match, but not spend a ton of money, going with stock items is cheapest and it will look great.
I got an incredible (actually I now have 2) wool dress cooler in my barn colors for under $100 ---- because it was one of the color combinations that it was already made in.
For instance, Blue/gray and green/tan are usually stock color combinations. But if you want your barn colors to be blue/tan, you will have trouble finding that combination.
Also look at stall guards, tack trunks, shipping boots, scrims, etc. If you are going to end up buying these things anyway, choose your colors so you can easily buy them for low prices.
PS: Choose something that you can live with for a looong time. Fad colors may interest you now, but in 20 years? Several years ago, I switched from green/gray to blue/gray. I am still only 1/2 changed over because I had so many green items, that I did not need a lot of things. I am buying blankets, etc. in blue gray as I need them, but it will take me years before everything I own is in blue/gray.
I’ve always liked Black and Red, but its hard to find black blankets with scarlet trim.
Not sure if anyone has touched on this but its also important to remember to make your base color one that will not show a lot of dirt. Show curtains get really dirty and while the thought of a nice crisp white curtain is nice, it’s not really practical. My old barn had grey curtains, black trim, burgundy piping, and we all got black trunk covers with silver monograms/burgundy shadow. Delightful!
My absolute favorite color combination right now, though, is Navy as a base, white trim and LIME GREEN piping.
[QUOTE=ybiaw;7458729]
Not sure if anyone has touched on this but its also important to remember to make your base color one that will not show a lot of dirt. Show curtains get really dirty and while the thought of a nice crisp white curtain is nice, it’s not really practical. My old barn had grey curtains, black trim, burgundy piping, and we all got black trunk covers with silver monograms/burgundy shadow. Delightful!
My absolute favorite color combination right now, though, is Navy as a base, white trim and LIME GREEN piping.[/QUOTE]
Key lime house has gone to your brain.
You know you like it. It was more that I was watching a football (?) game one time and the team from Seattle (?) wears those colors and I thought it was really pretty.
Come on, it’s that or hot pink, white, and lime green. Pick your battles.
I personally like navy, baby blue and white or black, gray, and white/tan or hunter green, burgundy and tan/white.
“No wire hangers!”
And also if Dover has thought to sell your barn colors to the masses, you have to up the ante a little bit in the originality department.
I know y’all 'l hate me, but I feel the same way about plain wooden trunks, and for the same reason.
Now if you were going to get a whole show set up and create some custom art work or pick a third color/material like plaid or herring bone that’s very pretty and unusual, then you can go Plan Jane/Obvious with your base stuff.
Also, I think more barns should buy show equipment/horse clothing in their custom colors and then rent it to clients. It is a PITA to have an old-colored $1K tack trunk at your new barn.
But! This Joan Crawford would not be amenable to clients buying Whatever Colored horse clothing for use at home. Matchy match should go to the core. And for most barns, the “at home” situation is the one you’ll see and the one that will represent you 90% of the time.
Top barns buy the stuff from their suppliers and bill the client. Perhaps a nice compromise between that and a fugly free for all is picking a base color, or base+plus second color that are easy to find. That gives the HO some room to comparison shop or choose a different maker for her blankets than the one the barn does. For example, I’m not a fan of Baker blankets for reasons of function. I’d really want a second legal option if I was in a barn that used those.
