Well, color perception is really emotional. If you like cool colors like navy then go for it.
I personally find warm and cool colors together jarring. I detest lime green and navy together. Or orange and blue . And the worst has to be red and pink. That’s just me.
I had greys so any color worked. Except cream and ivory. Greys to me look best in pure clear white. Ymmv
I’ve been walking around thinking about color. Riding in the forest looking at all the green that survives winter, moss and cedar branches and the new grass and ivy. All those shades of green look lovely against my chestnut horse but by and large don’t exist in saddle pads.
There is such a range of colors in the blue to blue green to green range, and they can vary by whether they are primary, true brights, pastel tints, darker, also warmer.
Anyhow I have a parka in what is called Petrol Blue. It’s a blue tending green, but darker and “dirtier” or greyer than teal. It’s a nice color and turning up in outdoor gear now. It looks to me like a storm cloud color.
Anyhow, project horse is a buttermilk buckskin, light straw colored. The Petrol Blue is just a fantastic color for her. Makes her glow.
My Paint riding horse is a very standard red chestnut. The Petrol Blue does absolutely nothing for her. Doesn’t clash but does nothing. Dark green, navy, lighter or brighter or duller blues, all look better. Navy can be warmer or cooler, current navy items are tending to be cooler.
When I give my Paint turnout with a bright bay horse, it’s clear that the bay is more vivid, more red, closer indeed to an actual chestnut nut, than my horse who has a golden tan undertone.
i like a combination of chestnut, rust, black and copper. I LOVE chestnut and lavender and brass/gold…don’t know how my perfect pic would look with a black saddle and brown bridle and reins but maybe.
My show jacket is this color. A bluer toned forest green that I couldn’t call hunter green. I love it.
Patagonia maybe 5 years ago made some menswear this color, SO has a jacket that is this exact color & it is the ideal color for him. I should call Le Mieux and send them a color sample for them to make next season!
Le Mieux has a new shade of green called Sage, which looks more like a muted hunter green. I’m limiting myself to only one saddle pad and the lavender will have to do…but I’d really love a green one.
Equestrian Stockholm Parisian Blue is a beautiful shade for chestnuts.
I need some new colors for my chestnut and love those LeMieux (sp?) and PSOS pads but can’t wrap my head around paying over $100 for a saddle pad.
I needed high withers and a firmer fabric for my mare for the pads to fit right and not bunch up. I ended up with two Ogilvy baby pads for dressage and two Lemieux for the jump saddle. There wasn’t really anything else in my market that had high withers and was big enough for the dressage saddle . Anyhow I’ve been really happy with their functionality, and it’s stopped me collecting stacks of cheaper pads!
Same! I have 1 white, 1 black, and one other color Le Mieux jump pads and 1 Ogilvy hunter green baby pad. I donated the stack of other pads to barn kids that don’t have $$$ and let them call dibs on whatever they wanted.
I don’t even own or lease right now, I don’t need more than 4!
If you sign up for the Equestrian Stockholm emails or follow them on FB, they do have some good sales now and then and I think free shipping over $100 USD, so it’s not too bad if you buy 2 pads on a sale and get free shipping.
LeMieux - it looks like you can get the suede pads from Country and Stable for around $72 and free shipping. Still not cheap, but not terrible. I think the white LM carbon mesh pads I got from sstack.com for about $65.
Both options are a better value than the cheaper SmartPak pads I bought on sale and subsequently gave away. 
I’m a few weeks tardy in circling back to this topic that I started. I thought for sure I’d be getting a chestnut since every horse my trainer and another friend had found for me to look at was chestnut. But I ended up getting a bay! My last horse was a black bay. This one is slightly lighter bay with a star, snip and 3 socks. So my pads and other colored clothing will work fine with my new mare. But I still enjoyed the virtual shopping and suggestions - hope other COTHers did too!
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